Unlikely Futures
by Sharkins17
Summary: It is a new age of uncertainty. In a far-off camp in the Arathi Highlands, a young orc lives a simple life caught between his own ambitions and those expected of him. But when a mysterious invitation to a magical academy arrives, he discovers what it means to be true to himself, and what it costs to fight for those he loves. World of Warcraft fanfic with only RP/supporting OCs.
1. The Casting of Bones

**Chapter 1: The Casting of Bones**

* * *

The hut was a storm of noise, light, and pain. Outside, in the vast deadpan of the desert, a wicked wind tore through the night, kicking up dust, stirring the coyotes into a howling frenzy.

Between pushes, between panicked breaths that did nothing as the sweat and dust congealed and slipped down her neck and chest and bursting belly, Veda caught glimpses of the surroundings. Of the wolves and the scorpions and the boars painted on the dry skin canvas surrounding her. Of the heat lightning blazing through animals' eyes, throwing their charcoal outlines in harsh contrast. Of the fire sputtering out in the center of the shifting shadows as the bone charms clattered from the ceiling and nature's horror howled in through the snapping door flap. Of the witch doctor—a slender, young troll called Muzunji, face painted in the ways of his ancestors—chanting to the Loa but mostly just looking terrified that a baby was coming and his medicine bags and incantations probably weren't doing much of anything to ease Veda's pains.

 _Don't think of it_ , the Orc tells herself. _Don't think of it._ Unbidden, her clan stirs in her mind. Frostwolves, once. They had converged on the Dark Portal decades ago with the other Draenic orc clans. She was barely a child, then. Her father had carried her through that immense monolith of magic. It had felt like breaking through an icy lake and stepping into a blazing sun. Her father had died shortly after their clan was exiled to Alterac, and she and others had journeyed to join the New Horde some time later. So many had been lost along the way. She didn't know who they were. Who any of them were. They didn't know themselves, anymore. They were Frostwolves wandering in the desert. The First War had come and gone, and it had taken more than the beloved—it had taken their identity.

Who would her child be? Who were any of them? Who was left to tell them who they were?

She heaved. It was like nothing she could remember, like she was splitting apart, like every nerve was firing at once. Her mind spun. She couldn't scream or she would have no breath. Spots scattered in her vision. The lightning blared through the hut. The animals spun and ran, maybe. The wolf chased the boar chased the scorpion. The bone charms rattled. Darkness and light danced and life and death and myth and reality were all the same.

When relief came, it was only the pain that left. A chemical thing, maybe. The witch doctor's wide eyes looked up unflinchingly as he lifted the child, still slick with birth fluid and blood, umbilical cord a glistening snake in the dark.

The pain left, but the doubt remained.

"Congratulations, you be a mother, Veda."

She smiled weakly, tusks baring, head lolling to one side as the cool air of the night whipped in on the storm's wind. Her hands shakily took her child into her arms. "It's a boy, isn't it." She knew. In a way, without looking, she knew.

"Brave new world dis one born into," he said, collecting his payment from her things without asking. Veda didn't say anything. "He'll be needing protection, good raising. You do that."

Muzunji reached his long arm up and stroked the bone charms without looking, an old habit. Asking for good luck and protection from the spirits, the Loa, the ancestors. Whatever you believed in.

He stopped, turned his face without looking. "I'd normally cast da bones for ya, but this sack is kinda light." He tossed the sack of coins in his hand, weighing it.

Another flash of lightning. The wind ripped into the hut with a vengeance. The fire sputtered again, its flame going out. In the dark that remained, only embers glowed in its depths, casting an otherworldly hue to the walls. Shadows stretched like fingers to the ceiling, splayed over Veda's face, over the child of her newborn son.

"Hm," replied the witch doctor, looking out into the desert storm. "Maybe da Loa be tellin' me to take another thought." He laughed worriedly. "It be nasty out there, anyway."

Veda said nothing as he slowly returned, drawing a leather pouch from his belt. He cleared a table in the dim light and set a tallow candle alight with an ember from the fire. The warm glow spread across the table, and he spilled his pouch of knuckle bones on its surface. They rattled, and he looked down, frowning, when they went still.

"Hm," he said, gathering them and throwing them again.

Veda held her child tightly, looked down into his puffy face. Slowly, gently, she dabbed it clean. His eyes wouldn't open for a few minutes. His tiny hands were tightened into fists as he quietly tasted the breath of his new world.

Muzunji was attempting to see the child's fate, a cheap future. A destiny. Most orcs would end up warriors or shamans or hunters. Fewer would seek the other dark trades, like rogues and warlocks. Others would be craftsmen or leaders.

He had cast the bones several times before he gave up and sat on his haunches, scratching his head. "This…not be a common thing."

"What is it?" she asked, rubbing her child's cheek with a thumb.

"He will not be like tha others. He will struggle as you have struggled. What will ya name ya child?"

It was a strange thing to name an infant until some time had passed. Bad luck, some thought, in case it died in infancy. But Veda remembered her clan, remembered their journey. Remembered the man that had carried her into this new world, that had held her tiny hand as she tasted her first breath of Azeroth. He had died of some insect-born disease shortly after they arrived.

"My father was called Sargar Quickhand." She tucked her hand under her child's head and bottom and scooted him closer to her face, nuzzling her tusks against his. "He will be Sargrim."

"Sargrim," the witch doctor repeated, tasting the name. "Sargrim will be different from da others. He will follow da path of de arcane." He quickly gathered up his bones and tucked his bone bag away, leaving his medicine pouches as he made for the door again.

"That…can't be right," she said, confused.

Muzunji shrugged. "It be what it be. Da bones have spoken."

Lightning flashed. The wolf chased the boar chased the scorpion. The tallow candle burned to its stump.

Sargrim would be an orphan by sunrise, and on another continent by the time he was six.


	2. Madame Ji's Institute

**Chapter 2: Madame Ji's Institute for the Mystically Inclined**

* * *

It was noon when the post arrived. Shipments rarely arrived this far out into the Arathi highlands, and Thrakk'shan was a small, unassuming Orcish village established to watch the Dwarven front to the south. A front which, with the never-ending series of world-shattering events in the last handful of years, rarely saw action.

All of which meant that it was a miracle anything had arrived at all. To Sargrim, a young orc with little desire to live out his entire life doing chores for a has-been witch doctor, it seemed like the event of a lifetime.

Sargrim waited with Muzunji and his pack mule as the wagon trundled down the well-trodden road through the wide grasslands. Idly, he picked at his tusks, young and easily bored. To maintain his sanity, he tried to drown out the buzz of field insects with words. His eyes slipped from crate to crate on the wagon's broad back. Supply companies, family businesses, archaeological societies, and others were sending their goods across the world.

Sargrim privately wondered where he would go one day. Then he wondered whether that was a pointless dream. He sighed.

He was slender for an orc his age, although Muzunji's errands kept him active. He had known the old Troll as long as his memory allowed, and he had followed him across much of the old world. To pass the time on their long travels, and probably as a reflection of how unattached he was to any one place, he had traded for a thin leather pouch with a fold-over cover that he could string to his own belt with thongs of hide. In it, he would store small, short books—the kinds that would carry well, and weren't too difficult to read. At first, he had just read Muzunji's medicine books ad naseum. After a while, he started slipping small titles from unwary peddlers.

Although at first such a thing seemed hardly controversial—aside from stealing other's books, of course—exposure to many different Horde towns had shown him reading was not typically a highlight of Orcish tradition. Unless you could kill someone with a book, which could occasionally be the case, much to his surprise.

Muzunji nudged Sargrim out of his daydream—one which he immediately forgot—and tossed a basket at his feet. The old witch doctor was tall but hunched, like most of his kind, with deep bags under his eyes and ceremonial paint across his face. He reapplied it every so often. It was "good for business," he would often say. "'Ey, now. Let's get tha goods before they all gone, or you gonna be eatin' leather scraps for de next four months."

Muzunji coughed, a wet, harsh thing, and took out a small pouch, pulling its drawstrings loose and inhaling deeply of whatever was inside. He shivered, opened his eyes. His cough subsided.

Winter was fast approaching, rolling in with each chill night. The Horde requisitions were sent down from the Undercity and would likely be all Thrakk'shan would receive. Otherwise, they would get by as they always had—hunting, gathering, working the land, and making due.

Sargrim sighed again, bit down a complaint that would get him nowhere, and climbed up onto the wagon. Others—mostly Orcs, although there were some Forsaken among them for whatever reason—did likewise.

He was dropping a sack of potatoes down to the Troll when he noticed the flyer.

Few in Thrakk'shan had ties to the larger world. Some were sent to watch the front as a means of paying off debts or crimes, others to escape larger conflicts that plagued the world with every passing month. Sargrim was here because Muzunji, for whatever reason, decided to take him on as something between a ward and a servant. He had never known his parents, and since he didn't remember them, he didn't really mind.

While Muzunji stuffed his basket with all the corn and potatoes and salted meat he could carry, Sargrim reached down to the stack of letters and papers tied tightly with twine. The addresses were all for different places—the delivery man would be gone to other villages as he wound his way back to Lordaeron. But the vibrant purple parchment and twisting, ornate lettering—some of it laid in gold leaf—snared his attention.

He heard a rattling laugh from the driver, who looked back at him with burning gold eyes. "Take what you want of those," the Forsaken muttered. "They're just advertisements. Need to get rid of them, anyway." His arm cracked and popped as he reached back with a similar flyer, this one sealed with purple wax with the imprint of a scorpion.

Sargrim just stared at the wax seal for a while. Distantly, he was aware of Muzunji propping his back up and complaining about the ravages of age as he haphazardly tied the baskets up on his mule's back.

"Want some for your friends?" asked the driver, his golden eyes glittering, a toothless smile on his pale lips.

"No," Sargrim said, snapping out of a trance. "This will do."

He tucked the sealed parchment into his pouch and, thinking of nothing else but the flyer, filled up two more baskets, tied them down with the others, and headed off to his least favorite part of the week.

* * *

Sargrim had walked back and forth from the forest edge to the village proper four times before he realized all he thought about was the flyer. He couldn't carry as much wood as the other peons, and he definitely couldn't fell a tree to save his life, so he did a lot of running while the others cleared a small area of wood for the coming winter.

Bulkrek leaned heavily on the side of an old birch, wiping sweat from his brow, chest heaving, as his wood axe dangled from his other hand. "You're dropping wood everywhere, Sarg. It's not a hard job."

Sargrim looked back indignantly. "Then you carry it."

"And what?" Bulkrek replied, laughing. "You gonna cut down the trees?"

Sargrim frowned at him and went back to pick up his mess.

"Just do your job, alright? Got enough on my mind. Don't need to look after you."

"What would you have on your mind, Krek? How many reps you can do with a flour sack?"

Bulkrek laughed, hefting his axe and cutting a thick wedge out of the birch. In one stroke, it began to creak. The Orc looked at Sargrim, grinned, and gave the birch a sharp shove. As it fell, other peons scrambled out of the way. "Probably more than you, for starters. But no. Post came in. I'm gettin' out of this place."

Sargrim almost dropped all the wood he had just picked up. "You what?"

"Yep," Bulkrek replied, stretching his arms. "You're lookin' at the next member of a new elite corps based out of Orgrimmar. Something about the True Horde, I don't know." He leaned down, motioning for someone to bring over rope so they could haul it back whole for construction. "Point is, I'm gonna see the world, and probably crush a few skulls, too."

Bulkrek grinned again, a ring glistening on his single tusk, without looking at the smaller Orc. "And you're just gonna keep running errands? Just be that old Troll's errand boy until he dies?"

Sargrim dropped everything, wincing as a chunk struck his big toe. He felt red hot rage shoot through his neck. "Some here'd probably be dead without Muzunji's medicine."

Bulkrek smiled, a wide, full smile across a strong jaw. "Mhm," he said, standing up straight as he yanked a knot tight. He was a head taller than Sargrim, and probably twice his weight. "Gonna be a medicine man? Do his voodoo until you're old and dead, too?"

Before he had realized it, Sargrim was standing toe to toe with the larger Orc, glaring into his gaze. "You're gonna-"

Bulkrek smirked. "Hm?"

"I'm gonna-"

Bulkrek folded his arms. "Sorry, can't hear ya."

Sargrim gulped, already feeling the rage sink into his stomach as he backed down. "Just…watch it, alright?" He looked away.

Bulkrek snapped his neck. "Hey, Sarg," he called.

Sargrim stopped. "What." It was half question, half exasperation.

"Don't forget your wood."

Sargrim worked until dinner in silence.

* * *

Sargrim had followed Muzunji across the Eastern Kingdoms as the Troll's work demanded. Muzunji was an old practitioner of his ancestors' powers. A self-proclaimed witch doctor, he pedaled voodoo and juju and medicine, curses and blessings and poultices. Sometimes, he would pow wow the old spirits, those of his kin, or entreat the Loa. Muzunji was older now, and rarely did much of the latter, preferring the simple tasks that gave simple coin. He also seemed to have finally settled, or his bones did so without his permission, and the adventure had come to an end on a tall hill south of the village and just above the tree line. From the southern mountains of the Arathi Highlands, only the dim lights of the huts and hovels below, and a sharp winter wind, greeted the abode of the retired witch doctor.

Sargrim nearly threw the door off its hinges as he returned.

He instantly regretted it, and he steeled himself for Muzunji's sharp rebuke, but the Troll was out, as per a letter he had left on his medicine desk, stitching some Forsaken's foot back together as it rotted off.

Sargrim dropped some wood down on the other side of Muzunji's hut, by the fireplace, and went about cleaning up after the old Troll. He rolled up his meditation mat—yellow and black fur he was told came from some kind of exotic cat—and emptied incense bowls of their ashes. He stoked up the fire, feeling the cold night setting in, and sat down, drawing out a copy of _The Legends of Huln Hightmountain_ and the sealed flyer.

He stared at the scorpion imprint on the seal.

As the fire grew, he shrugged off layers from the day. His deer pelt. A tunic. His belt. Then he laid on his stomach, cracking open the seal.

Shimmering light burst and faded away as the seal broke. He dropped it in surprise.

"The hell?"

The scorpion imprint began to move, its legs twitching, its tail flicking, until it seemed to climb inside of the parchment and push it open. Sargrim jumped to his feet, expecting a slick, black insect to launch its barbed tail at his face, but when the flyer opened, the scorpion was gone. Cautiously, he picked it up, eyes slowly taking in the gold foiled letters and elegant, black-as-ebony fine print. As he read, he mouthed the letters to himself.

 ** _MADAME JI'S INSTITUTE FOR THE MYSTICALLY INCLINED_** _A world of wonder and enchantment awaits!_ _Do you yearn for the intrigue of distant worlds? Do you bore of the limitations of things mundane? Madame Ji's certified lessons for novice arcanists began at an out-of-this-world price! Unravel the mysteries of the elements! Master the language of magic! Mystify your friends and family!_ _The first three lessons are absolutely_ _ **free!**_ _Don't wait! Simply sign below (no blood, please) to_ _ **instantly**_ _receive your_ _ **free**_ _lessons._

Sargrim stared at the signature line. Reading was, among most Orcs, much less of a necessity than learning to use an axe or hunting down game. Intellectual pursuits in general were often considered cowardly, lowly, and were all the less common in a backwater border town like Thrakk'shan. The coincidence of the opportunity was not lost on him. But he didn't have anything to write with.

The letters shimmered the color of stars and nebulae, and he looked in his hand. A fountain pen was in his grip.

He was excited, but also wary. This was his chance. Something different from anything he had ever done—anything anyone in Thrakk'shan would ever do. He could learn how to do things that would guarantee him a way out of the highlands. He could travel to the Undercity. To other continents. Maybe even places he didn't know existed.

Bulkrek would eat shit once he told him.

He was giddy and grinning despite his incredulity. The signature line glimmered with golden starlight.

He cleared Muzunji's medicine table and lit a tallow candle. The black letters looked different in the candlelight. More businesslike, somehow. Shakily, he lowered the nib of the pen to the line.

He signed.

The candle blew out. The fire guttered. He jumped back from the desk and turned sharply to a knock at the door. Muzunji? No, he would have no reason to knock. But who? Madame Ji? How? What if Muzunji came home to a stranger at their hovel?

He inched to the door. Another knock, no louder or more urgent than the first. Curt, crisp, polite. Three raps and then silence and then three more raps.

His mind flooded with greetings, with questions. What was an arcanist? What was magic, really? What would his first lessons be? Did he have to leave to some school?

He held his breath as he opened the door. No one was there.

He frowned. "Figures."

As he turned back in for the night, disappointment simmering in the back of his mind, he stubbed his toe on a large, leather bound tome.

Printed in gold letters: " _The Rudiments of Magic for the Layman_ by Madame Minh Ji Starpaw, Master Arcanist, Follower of the Five Sorcerers."

The cover was two pieces of ornately styled and delicately carved wood, held together by a cord that wound through the spine. Many symbols and letters were obviously Mogu—he had read enough in his travels to know that the Horde was in the midst of a great campaign there currently.

"Madame Ji," he muttered to himself, trying out the name. "What secrets do you have for me?"

He cracked open the cover, turned the cover page, and slid his crude, Orcish finger down the bamboo composite page.

"Magic is," the first sentence began, "one part sacrifice, one part imagination, and one part determination. Combine these three elements and you can create, to varying degrees, whatever your heart desires."

He stayed up all night reading.

 _Sargrim dreams a deep dream. There is lightning in a vast desert, flashes in a swirling, choking darkness, and a howling wind that would drive a man mad. He wanders by himself, trailing a glimmering violet scorpion which is always just out of reach. Until he reaches it, and puts out his hand, and the tail cocks back, and its body sinks down flat, and the barb lunges forward faster than his hand can retreat, and he wakes up._

The sound of the tome slamming in front of his face was like a cannonball firing next to his ear. He stumbled back on his hands, Madame Ji's book on the floor in front of him. He was barely dressed, his hair stuck up at all angles. The fire had long guttered out and the shadows were long, coming from the west.

"You realize what time it is? Realize work needs doing?" Muzunji ranted, knocking him on the head with a drinking horn. "And I come home after sewing _feet_ back togetha all night and find ya just layin' on ya tum with a book up yer nose!"

Sargrim rubbed his bleary eyes, trying to focus, but all he could see were echoes of chapter two's introduction to metamorphic energy patterns and a dozen other "entry level arcanist" terms he could hardly understand. "I was just…kind of…"

"Ye were _just_ wastin' time, ya weird little Orc! Dis place don't pay for itself!" Muzunji snarled and smacked him with the drinking horn again, hard. It cracked.

"That _hurts_ , okay?!" Sargrim groaned, spots spinning in his vision. He got to his feet, picking up his clothes from last night, sniffing them, shrugging, and putting them all back on. He had his deer pelt in his hand when Muzunji picked up Madame Ji's book.

"An' what's dis? Some voodoo thing?" He laughed. "Told ya mother you'd be a different kinda Orc. Glad ta see da spirits don't lie." He turned the pages with a laugh still in his old eyes that slowly died. "'Dis be…real magic, mon." He looked up at Sargrim. "How'd ya afford it? We got no money. Ya didn't steal it, did ya?"

Sargrim yanked his arms through his pelt, slipped his belt through its buckle and back again, and picked up a skinning knife, slipping it through the belt at his side. It was slowly dawning on him how late in the day it was, and how late he was getting down to the village to help the hunters skin their kills. "I got it last night from some flyer from the post. I gotta go, Muzunji. I can't do this right now." His head was still spinning—although from his reading all night or the drinking horn, he wasn't sure.

"Not tha only thing that needs to go," Muzunji started cryptically.

Sargrim stopped in the doorway and turned. "What?"

Muzunji held the book with two thick fingers. "Ya not ready for 'dis kinda reading yet, Sarg. Madame Ji? Probably some kinda trick for wide-eyed, busy-eared magic mumbo wannabes."

"What you mean, wannabes?" he replied angrily.

"I know what ya feelin' right now," Muzunji said, his tone shifting, softer. "Ya want ta be your own thing, see de world." He laughed. "'Ting is, de world's an awful place, little Orc. Good people die. Bad people rule. You'd be betta off learnin' a trade. Say, Muzunji's healin' arts."

Slowly, Muzunji's words trickled through Sargrim's foggy brain. "You mean that you've just been keeping me around so I could take over for you when you die. This whole time."

Muzunji's eyes lit up. "What'd ya think was happenin'? You've been apprenticin' 'dis whole time. Readin' da books. Learnin' de tools of me trade. And no, not when I be dyin'. I wanna retire, and ya _owe_ it ta me to work a bit while I rest me old bones."

"I'm not staying here, Muzunji."

"Fine. But either is this."

Muzunji reached into a sack by the fire place, took a handful of one of his old medicine mixtures, and threw it into the dead fireplace. It ignited with a bang, smoke filling the room. "Ya not ready fer 'dis magic yet. Ya got no teacher, no one to keep ya safe! Ya tryin' ta fly before ye can walk."

Sargrim lurched forward, watched his dreams erupt in orange and purple flames, felt the sting of the scorpion as it all turned into ashes before him. "MUZUNJI, WAIT!" But it was too late.

Sargrim had rarely cried. Maybe never. He couldn't recall ever really having to, besides when Muzunji struck him. But in that moment, he did. He ran to the fireplace, threw his hands into the flames without thinking, retracted them as they kissed the flames, bit his lip, and threw his hands in again. He scattered embers and ashes as the book quickly dissolved into curling black and purple pages.

He sobbed. Choked. He was vaguely aware of Muzunji trying to haul him out of the flames, but the Troll was old, and he was an Orc and young. The fire burned out quickly, leaving only embers and smoke and second-degree burns. He couldn't feel them yet. He would, but for now he didn't.

"Sargrim! Quit yer baby cryin'! Get outta there!"

He didn't know why, but everything his life consisted of, everything he would do today and for every day going forward—the pattern of it, hauling wood and skinning game and stitching feet back together and watching Bulkrek turn his back on him and the village and leave him behind—flashed through his mind like a dying vision. His badly burned fingers twitched in his lap.

Muzunji got out the poultices and an aloe-infused wrap and tended to his fingers as the pain began to set in, but Sargrim's eyes were seeing a grim future, not an unpleasant present.

"You'll thank me, Sargrim. You'll see. Safer 'dis way."

The witch doctor got up when Sargrim said nothing for a long time, the Orc just staring into the ashes. Muzunji hacked and heaved, his body shaking, and stumbled through his things for his pouch. He inhaled, his muscles tensing, relaxing, and then, with a wary eye on Sargrim, he turned in for the night.

Sargrim tried to remember anything from Madame Ji's first two lessons, but the memory of them seemed consumed by the same flames, along with the only passion he had ever felt for anything. It was all gone.

"I…only got…to chapter two…"

* * *

A week later, Sargrim was back at the edge of the woods. The others were cutting wood with a vengeance now. The winter months were almost upon them. But he could hardly find the energy to care, and the others noticed, casting him glares as their wood piles built up.

He sat with his back to the weathered remnants of an old palisade wall. Once, maybe, they had feared the Alliance would stage attacks to press north to the Undercity again, but little had come of that and all war efforts were focused on Pandaria, they had heard eventually. Now, it just kept the foxes from stealing their chickens, and kept Sargrim from falling over as he turned the pages of _The Legends of Huln_.

It was a bit after noon, he guessed, by the position of a bleak winter sun. The wind was sharp and crisp, and the view of the mountains and forested hills to the south was clear. He let the dying warmth of the sun wash over him and closed his eyes, trying in vain to recall Madame Ji's concepts. _Magic is one part sacrifice, one part imagination, and one part determination._ He thought of the scorpion. Of distant worlds. Of ancient battles of heroes and villains across the continents. Of Huln Hightmountain and his spear, and the powerful wizard Rhonin, and the Dragon Queen and the Second War.

He opened his eyes and he was still in Thrakk'shan.

Distantly, he heard wheels on packed earth rumbling along, and Orcs singing old battle songs. He turned his head toward the road to see a caravan approaching, three wagons long, led by a warrior armed to the gills, his helmet slung at his side, as he whipped the lead horses to a stop.

A sharp pain echoed through his shin and he snapped his attention to a talk, stout Orc. He vaguely remembered her name was Trabina, and her perpetual scowl reassured him that he was about to get a talking-to.

"Get your ass off the ground, Sarg, or you and that witch doctor aren't getting a single _grain_ of rations this week," she snarled.

He looked up at her. She had brown-red eyes, piercings running up one ear, hair tied back so tightly it could probably peel her face off. Trabina Grimsaw. She could rip a tree down and hack it apart faster than an Orc could down a mug of mead. And she never smiled.

She kicked him again. "You hear me, scrawny? Get your ass _up_. Got a lot of good Orcs makin' ready for winter and you're just sitting there, looking at… what is that? A book?" Her eyes squinted, and she smiled a smile that wasn't a happy thing, but something wicked, instead. And she laughed. "Give it here."

Sargrim began to get up and stow it away. His fingers were still bandaged, but Muzunji's so-called healing arts were actually pretty effective. "Sorry, I'm coming," he snarled.

She caught him by the wrist. "No, you know what? I'm sick of this. Been this way for a week." She clicked her tongue. "Your whole life, actually." She hauled him to his feet and he dropped the book to the browning grass. Trabina motioned behind her to the dozen or so Orcs hacking away at the forest. "You think you're _better_ than these hard-working Orcs? That it? Think you're above this kinda hard work? Just sit around, reading your fantasies, while we do all the hard stuff to make sure your sorry ass has a warm fire and salted meat to get through the long months?"

Sargrim snarled at her, his tusks baring. He tried to yank his arm out of her grip, but she was strong. "I'm just…going through some stuff, okay?"

"Going through what? You think we don't have families? Problems? Darok got his damn foot stuck in a bear trap last week! But look at him—got it wrapped up and set, and now he's cutting down timber for a new roof for the tavern so the snow won't crash it in."

The other Orcs were taking notice, some of them dropping their axes and saws. A couple walked up behind Trabina.

She drew him closer, his pointed green ear within spitting distance of her mouth. When she spoke, it was a sinister, harsh whisper. "You're not like other Orcs. Good Orcs. Proud Orcs. You're never gonna pull your weight. You're _weak_. You're _useless_ to us, Sargrim, and you'll never leave this place."

She kicked _The Legends of Huln_ back toward the onlooking Orcs, who all looked down at it, laughing. One picked it up by the corner of a cover, flipping it around, throwing it back and forth with his buddies.

Sargrim was vaguely aware of a formation of armored Orcs stepping out of the back wagon by the road, and that Bulkrek was walking up to them, a travel sack slung over his back. He was vaguely aware that the big Orc was listening to what the caravan lead had to say, that training would begin intensely on arrival to the capital, and that he would receive rations based on his performance, and that honor and loyalty to Warchief Garrosh was paramount. Sacred, even.

"So," Trabina continued. "Be a good peon, suck it up, and accept it. This will all be easier when you do." She threw him back into the other Orcs as they tossed his book around. All of them were bigger than him. None of them could make out the title. And they smelled like shit.

Trabina snatched the book out of the air as they threw it and dropped it into Sargrim's hands. He looked at it, and then at her. "I want you to take this…chunk of paper. I want you to take it and rip it apart."

Sargrim glared at her. "I'm not going to-"

She nodded, and two others put their hands on his shoulders, their grip tightening. "Do it, or you're going to spend the night out in the forest. With the wolves."

He bit his lip. He had other books in Muzunji's hut. The Troll had no aversion to his hobbies. But the idea of destroying it felt like another nail in his coffin. He opened it about two-thirds the way through. It was the part where Huln decided to carve Jarod Shadowsong's name on his spear to honor the elf for saving his life.

He closed his eyes, took each half in each of his hands.

He tried to rip it in half, but he wasn't strong enough. He snarled, tried harder. Put his whole body into it. He was distinctly aware of the others laughing at him, slapping his back, their spit flying.

Trabina's head inclined, her eyes sliding into crescents as she gave him a sidelong glance, turning back to her axe, hefting it over her shoulder. She laughed. "Now who looks like the idiot?"

Trabina walked away. At some point, he was pushed over to his knees. They may have tried to rough him up a bit, but he was floating, spinning, as the walls of his life closed in, defined who he would be, revealed the futility of his efforts. He lived in a world that he would never understand, and that would never understand him. He looked at his bandaged fingers. His book was a ruin on the ground, but still whole.

There were footsteps behind him. The caravan was pulling away, along with the warriors' battle songs. His shoulders tensed. "I'll be over, damnit. Give me a…a minute. I just…"

A heavy hand grasped his shoulder. Not unkindly, but firmly. The other reached down and picked up his book. " _Legends of Huln_ , eh?" came a familiar voice.

Sargrim blinked. "How'd you know?"

"The title, stupid. You're not the only one that can read here. And stop crying. It's dumb and the others will never respect you."

Bulkrek took him by the arm and yanked him to his feet, placing the book back in his hands. "This is yours. Put it away and come help me with the lumber."

"But… the caravan. The elite…brigade or whatever."

"Corps. And they seemed a little full of themselves."

"But it's all you wanted. You were going to get out of here."

Bulkrek wiped his nose with a thumb, cracked his neck. "Don't read too much into it. Let's go." He hefted his own axe up and headed back to work.

Sargrim slowly stowed _The Legends of Huln_ away, watching without comprehending as Bulkrek walked back to the forest line and the caravan of his future rolled in the opposite direction.

To the south, the first winter storm crawled up the Eastern Kingdoms. Evening set earlier, and smoke began to curl from the village cabins and hovels.

Sargrim wiped his eyes with his forearm and followed.


	3. Emergency Landing

**Chapter 3: Emergency Landing**

* * *

The next day, the sky over the Arathi highlands had dulled into a bleak grey-blue as winter arrived in its howling, frigid glory. Sargrim regarded the silver sun from the corner of his eye, and then, shifting firewood on his left shoulder and a threadbare sack of collected herbs in his right, made south for the woods and the village.

Thrakk'shan had been established as a camp to watch the perimeter between the Dwarven and Gnomish lands to the south and the Forsaken and Sin'dorei lands to the north. Arathi had historically been home to one of the most powerful Human kingdoms, the Arathi Empire, but it had split apart long ago, now only ruins and memories. Thrakk'shan had since grown, walled up to the south and west with thick, disused palisade. From the ill-traveled road that ran through the highlands, a newer dirt road wound south toward the village and the southern mountains. The same road ran through the heart of the small village, and Sargrim followed it as he passed through.

He picked at his bandaged fingers, thinking about the preceding week. He tried in vain to recall at least a handful of the concepts Madame Ji's book had opened to him—if he could remember a couple, he could write them down, maybe even request some books from the Undercity and start research of his own. He would have to be careful, though, not to let it consume him again. He didn't need Muzunji burning more books.

For now, he reasoned, he would take it one day at a time. Muzunji was right, in a way. They needed money, the witch doctor was getting old, and while Sargrim would probably never entire explicitly into that tradition, knowing healing practices and medicine would be a logical and good money maker. And he had relied on the Troll for his entire adolescent life. He had worked to help support their lifestyle, but Muzunji had provided shelter and company for years. Sargrim _did_ owe him at least a little ease of burden providing for the two of them.

The cabins and small buildings passed behind him left and right. The main road was the only one that looked anything like a normal town—the rest of the village was mostly chicken coops, small cattle enclosements, and sporadic, squat structures. On the left, he passed the village tavern. Ninefingers ran that place, an old Forsaken that surprisingly still had eyeballs. She had come down when the place was only a camp and brought the booze. Since then, she had developed her small tent into one of the larger and more permanent structures, backed by a two-story attachment that served as a small inn. She probably had the only true kitchen in the entire village—most Orcs didn't care for learning the finer arts—although she sometimes had difficulty making palatable meals, as she lacked both functioning taste buds and a nose.

Trabina had her crew working on an even larger structure with supports from the forest. A garrison and town center, where the village council—once formed, Muzunji likely to be among them—would meet, and where the village guard—also a recent development, taken on by Bulkrek's sister Kargatha—would sleep and eat. Otherwise, they were mostly cabins devoted to the founding families as they settled and what had once been part of the war effort now slowly turned into something more substantial.

The road dwindled into a foot path after it passed through the village proper. It broke out of a small gate in the southern wall to a field of tall grass much like the rest of the highlands. The field spread for about half a mile until it met the tree line. Muzunji's hovel was at the top of a high hill that looked up to the mountains and looked down to the village. The Troll said that practitioners of his art best dealt from a distance, and he was more about solitude as he got older, anyway.

Sargrim ascended the meandering path from the woods onto the heathered hill of his…well, he wasn't quite sure what Muzunji was to him. An unwitting apprentice, apparently. Certainly not a son, or an equal of any kind. He imagined he would be Muzunji's caregiver in the coming years, a thought he did not relish but had no alternative for.

Again, the orc shifted the weight of the firewood and hefted his sack of herbs over his other shoulder. He was scrawnier than most orcs, but he was still an orc, and he was strong. His pelt hung over his shoulders and down his back, the animal's head concealing his black hair and brow. As he ascended the hill, he could make out Thoradin's Wall to the west. Stromgarde—mostly a ruin now, though once the proud capital of the Arathi empire—was tucked behind the western mountains and cliffs. A country that had once been rife with conflict between the new Horde and Alliance was mostly a field of ruins and game hunting, and conflict rarely came across the Thandol Span to the south.

As his sharp eyes traced the southern foothills and woodlands that he saw the machine fall out of the sky.

He blinked, dropped the wood and sack. Rubbed his eyes with the heels of his fists. Looked again.

Muzunji emerged from behind the hovel, a small fenced space that served as their mule's pen. Muzunji called the mule Quickclaw because he had always wanted a tamed velociraptor, instead. They were common in the northern highlands, but he didn't have the gall to try and catch one, much less the expertise. So, he made due with Quickclaw the mule, who was neither quick nor clawed, and quietly indulged this lie.

"Well, watcha waitin' for?" Muzunji asked. "Get inside and get de fire goin' before me old bones start barkin' ."

The air broke in pops as the thing poked through the sound barrier. A whistle grew to a howl. It sparked and smoked and then it simply exploded in a fireball, sending thick black trails of debris and burning oil like roots to the forest below.

Sargrim's eyes widened as he took a step forward. "Muzunji, what is that?"

Muzunji squinted his eyes and held his hand over his face to block out the sun. "It be…an airplane, methinks."

"A…what?"

Muzunji shrugged his shoulders and turned back into his hovel, bone charms rattling from the ceiling with the intake of wind. "A flyin' machine—Goblin-made, like."

Sargrim looked between the old witch doctor and the descending fireball. "Shouldn't we…do something? Tell someone?"

The door closed in his face. All he heard was a muffled, "Bah! I be told old for dis shit."

As the fireball slammed into the high hills, a shudder rippled through the forest and fowl took wing.

He barely registered the stained and badly patched parachute that descended two miles from the crash site, and, knowing nothing of such things, picked up the firewood and herbs and headed inside.

* * *

 _Sargrim dreams, and as he dreams he is transported. He knows he is in Muzunji's hovel, laying on a bear belt next to a dying fireplace, but his heart tells him he is in a deep, dark place. A place of pine trees and needle floors where every footstep crunches in a deep snow. Where elderberry and holly and frosted tall grasses twinkle as a sourceless light follows him. It is the moon, he realizes. He also realizes he is not alone._

 _He does not know how he knows this phrase, but it comes to him. The wolf chases the boar chases the scorpion. He repeats it as he moves in the dark, breath a white mist, winter running through his flesh like blades—but also somehow soothing. The wolf chases the boar chases the scorpion. Wolf chases boar chases scorpion. Wolf boar scorpion._

 _He shudders, he blinks. From out of the dark, low in the forest ground cover, twinkle two gleaming eyes. Teeth gleam in the moonlight. A rustle in the distance. A moan. A hollow, distant scream. The forest shudders._

 _He feels in the dream way that something is rising behind him. Immense, unknowable, all-consuming. A vorpal darkness, churning black clouds, a Great Nothing that is also a Presence. The low, animal eyes in the brush before him blink, looking up behind him, seeing the Darkness, and then it lets out a low wine. The creature bolts into the night._

 _Then he is awake._

* * *

The next morning, a thick frost covered everything. The last leaves of the strongest trees surrounding their hilltop were tipped in white and brittle as bone. From the south, a wall of dark clouds moved slowly, indomitably toward the village.

"You gotta put your arms into it more, create some momentum and let that do the work," Bulkrek was telling him. The two of them were outside Muzunji's hut, a coil of smoke spiraling out the top, splitting wood for the winter. Well, Bulkrek had split some wood to show Sargrim the principle. Sargrim's hatchet mostly caught the edge of the standing wood and stuck there, distinctly _not_ splitting it into useable firewood. Bulkrek leaned against Quickclaw's pen with his thick arms folded over his barreled chest. Quickclaw looked up at the two of them with a glazed look, slowly chewing grass over and over again.

Sargrim tried to yank the hatchet out, then stuck his boot on the log and pulled harder, but it was stuck like someone had fused the two together. "How the hell do you do this every day."

"Practice," Bulkrek replied. "Determination. And I know how to use an axe."

Sargrim sighed, his whole body aching after just twenty minutes of repeated failures. He let go of the hatchet and the log dropped to the ground. The hatchet flew out of it on impact and clattered across the grass. "Are you kidding me."

Bulkrek's laugh boomed.

"Why are we doing this again."

"Because," Bulkrek said, pushing to his feet, "this is a pretty normal thing to do in most places in the world, you need to get stronger, and you don't want Trabina making you look like an idiot, anymore."

"I'd rather be-"

"Reading, I know." Bulkrek rubbed his brow. "But you're not. So, get better at this."

Sargrim sighed, picked up the hatchet, placed the log back on the ground, and tried again. This time, he struck closer to the middle, and the hatchet buried deeper. He smiled a little, tried to pull it out, and cursed when it was stuck again.

Bulkrek didn't seem to notice. "Kargatha's running a dozen peons in drills today. Well, over the last couple days. Trying to turn them into the town's first guard unit."

Sargrim, in turn, barely registered what Bulkrek was saying, thinking how much easier cutting wood would be if he just enchanted a hatchet to do it for him. Between attempts, he tried to remember more of Madame Ji's lessons. _All mages interface with the elements. To do so, we must use a symbolic language, Titanic in origin, which we refer to as the arcane. We do not implore the elements as shaman or druids do, but rather force them to do our bidding. Controlling these events—starting them, maintaining them, and controlling their scope—requires immense concentration that becomes second nature with practice. All of this is possible by using arcane symbols, glyphs, or incantations as a framework, much like building a canal to funnel water, or a telescope to channel light._

Bulkrek ruffled Quickclaw's crest of black fur. "And I'm helping her run drills. The bigger the village becomes, the more of a strategic threat it becomes to Dun Morogh. Trabina's talking about building watch towers at the corners of the wall, making it wrap around the north side of town, too. In the spring, we might bring in contractors to start some stonework…"

"Mhm. Kargatha's your sis, right?" Sargrim replied, his focus somewhere between Bulkrek's story, Madame Ji's lesson, and the motion of splitting wood. _Our first lesson will involve establishing simple warding magic. Warding magic can fend off magic-related diseases, physical, elemental, and spiritual entities, and enchant objects and fortifications to make them stronger. Extreme examples include the Mists that once surrounded Pandaria, shielding it from the Sundering, or the enchanted barrier between the forests of Quel'thelas and the old Scourge infection to the south…_

"…and I guess I'm just now realizing I never really wanted to leave, I just wanted to make a name for myself, you know?" Bulkrek continued, feeding Quickclaw a rotting apple. "And protect the people I care about. Like my sis, and my town. And all these knuckleheads that I have to train now."

Sargrim swung down again, splitting a log in half clean down the middle. Bulkrek stopped midsentence and gave a slow clap. "There ya go, bud. Just need some practice. Determination, see? It's ninety percent of life's battles."

Sagrim licked at a tusk, exhilarated, panting. His arms throbbed with a dull pain. "Hey, Krek, you see that airplane the other day?"

Bulkrek cocked an eyebrow. "A what?"

"That…thing. South. It was on fire, exploded, landed in the woods."

Bulkrek rubbed his stubble. "Some folks reported hearing something loud and strange, yeah, but I didn't see it. I think Kargatha sent some grunts on a jog through the woods to find out what it all was, but it didn't seem that important."

"Muzunji said it was some kind of flying machine. What if someone was in it?"

Bulkrek laughed. "Well, I know Gnomes are known for building things. Could've been a Gnomish…what was it? Airplane? In that case, they're probably meat mulch and wolf food by now."

Sargrim placed another log upright, getting ready to swing. "Did they report back? The grunts?"

Bulkrek shrugged. "Not that I know of. I was going to ask Kargatha when I joined for the morning routines. Almost forgot, honestly. Actually," he said, "I should go, but, reminds me. Left a little something for ya with the old doctor when I came up this morning. My Pa had some connections—friends, I guess—in the Third War and left some things behind. Guess he died, since I got a crate of his stuff when the post came couple days ago. Probably drank himself out. Way to go, eh? Wonder what Ma's up to." He smiled grimly.

"Sorry to hear that," Sargrim replied, leaning back on a fence post. Quickclaw clopped over to him and rammed his head into Sargrim's back. "What's this thing you brought?"

"Think you'll like it. You'll see. Anyway, I gotta go. Kargatha'll split my skull if I miss training with the grunts."

As Bulkrek ambled down the tall hill—his size made him have to take short, cautious steps or he'd go tumbling—Sargrim's jaw tensed. He looked south to the forest to where the airplane had crashed in the foothills. The smoke had cleared. No sound or flame came from that way any longer.

He shifted all the chopped wood to under the eaves of the hovel and tossing a skin tarp to protect it from the elements. Then, more than a little curious to see what Bulkrek had left, he went inside.

* * *

Bulkrek and Kargatha had been two of six children and, as far as Bulkrek knew, at least four other bastards. Their father, Markrek, had been a defector from the Warsong clan, though he had come over at Doomhammer's beckoning during the Second War. Their mother, Berentha, was a keen-eyed daughter of unknown lineage who saw through all of Markrek's womanizing and bullshit.

This wasn't to say that Markrek was a particularly bad Orc, or a bad father. He simply had his vices, as Berentha once said, and she had to keep him honest. He worked hard, mixed up in the constantly changing truces and allegiances of the Second and Third Wars. He had served his grunt time, barely surviving confrontations in the Blackrock Mountains. Although Bleeding Hollow tradition prided itself on bloodshed, Markrek had had enough after nearly losing his life several times, and spent the rest of his war days constructing zepplins, corsairs, and other vehicles of war with the Goblins. Which was to say, as an Orc with absolutely no technical skills whatsoever, he spent most of his time drinking and fooling around with his peers and betters.

By the time the Third War was over, Markrek had become quite the proficient people person. He knew engineers in Stranglethorn, trade barons on the high seas, oil suppliers out of the Cape, even some meat transporters trafficking through Durotar. Trading connections became his trade, and Berentha rarely wanted for anything, though they lived modestly.

At some point early on, they had had Kargatha, followed by Bulkrek, then Darvoc, Markrek junior, Lazga, and, runt of the litter, Ragnak. A large and healthy family was a rarity during the endless wartime, but Markrek, if nothing else, kept them together and, more importantly, moved them around enough to avoid the ravages of war. Which did little to stifle the Orcish obsession with battle, and a child's need to do everything their parents tell them not to. And so, when Bulkrek was barely ten years old, he had picked up a backpack, stuffed it with Kargatha's famous spicy boar sausage and a bottle of Markrek's finest rum, and took the next zeppelin to the Eastern Kingdoms and his first paid military station in Arathi.

Kargatha had come later, and when he refused to return home, she refused to leave his side. She had always been like that. Willful. It was both to his bane and boon, depending on the circumstances. But as the first two to pop into the world, and traveling around the world as they had, they had a bond like iron.

It was with some irony that he had only just recently realized how important family now was to him as he grew older, no matter what form that took. And when the warband had rolled into town to pick him up, the clarity of it had hit him like a charging boar.

Bulkrek smiled a toothy, broad smile as he walked down the ruddy main road of Thrakk'shan. It was small, and it was barely hanging on, but it was family.

As he passed the garrison—little more than ribs of wood in the bleak winter light—Kargatha looked over as she stood supervising with her arms crossed. Whatever contentment Bulkrek felt was turned on its head in Kargatha's hard eyes, and she nodded him over.

Bulkrek scratched his head as he approached. "Thought you'd be down with the grunts running morning drills," he said as he clasped her shoulder in greeting.

"Waiting on you, stupid," she said, flickering a smile in return.

"Place is really coming along here," he said, watching the peons work. He squinted when he noticed a Goblin foreman dodging wood planks turning this way and that as he consulted a schematic. "Thought we wouldn't have contractors in 'til spring."

She shrugged. "Trabina wants it done before the first winter storm hits. Better shelter in case things get bad."

Bulkrek shook his head. "Not gonna happen. One's already up on the mountains. It'll be here tonight, probably."

Her eyes flicked at him and away again. "Speaking of. The grunts never came back last night from that crash site."

"Could just be hiding out to skip work."

"With _that_ coming down in a day? They're dumb, but not that dumb."

"You think somethin' happened?"

"Animals. Bad sense of direction. Hell if I know. That was about a dozen good Orcs, though. We have half that left to get us through the dark months. Post won't come by until spring."

Bulkrek rubbed his chin. "We're alone out here, then, with what we got. Think we should send out a scouting party?"

She grunted. "Not until this storm passes. Can't risk losing more. By then, if they're not already wolf chow, they'll be popsicles."

"Well, what're you thinking?"

She shrugged, a worried look still dark on her face as she turned to head down to the training grounds. "Work our new guard unit hard. Try to get this building up fast. Hope the winter is short. Get more unlucky rejects shipped down in the spring."

Bulkrek jogged to catch up to her, and fell into pace beside her.

"Glad you didn't go," she said suddenly.

"Hm? Yeah."

"Didn't want to oversee this all on my own. Trabina is…Trabina. Muzunji is on his last breath, old Troll he is. Not many left to run things."

He nodded. "How many left for training?"

She grimaced. "'Bout six."

He looked down at the training grounds. In the spring, they would begin stretching the wall around the north side, but for now, his vision followed the widening grasslands out as far as he could see. Old rocks, tucked hills, and mostly a whole lot of nothing greeted his gaze.

The six grunts were kicking rocks when they arrived.

"Us against the world," he mumbled to himself.

* * *

Sargrim brought some wood in with him, too, since Muzunji was having trouble lifting anything these days. For his part, the witch doctor was crossed-legged on the bear pelt, bowls of incense spread around him as he attempted to induce a trance. He breathed deeply, inhaling the smoke, but coughed and shuddered. "Bah. Why must ya be so noisy on those feet, boy?"

"I brought more wood," he replied, not taking the bait, and dropped it beside the fireplace. Wordlessly, he shuffled about the room, looking for whatever Bulkrek had left behind with Muzunji.

Muzunji cleared his throat, sniffled. "First storm be comin'."

Sargrim worked quietly as he propped up the logs in the fire. "Vision tell you that?"

"Me old bones. Broke mah leg when I was young. Now it tells da weather." He cleared his throat, something phlegmy catching as he broke into a wet cough. "Dat Orc left ya a ting over there." He waved in the general direction of his medicine desk. "Tink it's a book of magic."

Sargrim crossed the room quickly, picking up the thin, worn tome in both hands. It was much, much smaller than Madame Ji's book, and with none of the glamour. His heart seemed to skip a beat. "How did he…?"

Muzunji stayed his question with a shaky hand. Then: "We both know ya ain't made ya swing swords n' axes. Never been a ting for ya. I want ye ta take ova de business, but if you're anyting like yer mother, ain't no force in dis world or de next that'll keep ya from followin' whatever obsession ya got in ya heart."

Sargrim looked at him incredulously. "You're not going to…burn it?" He tenderly flipped the lithe tome open, scanned the cover page. _The Rudiments of Spellcraft for the Initiate, Volume One._

"Muzunji make ya a deal. Make sure dese old bones live out their last years with fire and food on de hearth, and I won't toss anotha spell book in ta keep me warm." He slowly got to his feet, back creaking, and he hobbled over to the fire, stoking it with a rusted iron rod. "Ya know, my father didn't want me practicin' no medicine like de fancy medics did, wanted me ta follow only in his traditions, his chants n' spells n' practices."

Sargrim looked up, suddenly feeling small again in front of his benefactor. "You know more about medicine than anyone I know. Anyone we saw traveling across the world."

He nodded slowly, eyes catching the fire's glow. "Met him in de middle. Learned da ancestor's traditions. Da spirits, da Loa. Read medicine on de side. A lot of it goes hand in hand, ya know? Magic, faith, n' science. It all came from each other. Feeds into each other." He breathed deeply, closed his eyes.

Muzunji shivered, coughed. "Dat was my lesson. But I not be me father, and ya not me son."

Sargrim crossed the room, peeling his pelt off and slinging it over Muzunji's huddled, shivering frame. He took the iron rod from the old Troll's hand and stirred the fire. "Keep the flame going or you'll get sick, you know."

"I'm already sick," Muzunji said, cackling. "Worried 'bout ya old Troll?"

Sargrim didn't say anything, just stared into the fire with him. He felt himself spiraling in on himself, younger and younger, back when the world was simple. He was entering into adulthood, but he felt like he just killed his first hog, back when they had taken up residence with some farmers in Kalimdor. Muzunji had seemed old then, but not as much as he did now.

"I was mad," Sargrim said at last. "Real mad." He still had the spell book in his free hand, but he barely noticed it.

"Hm?"

"When you burned it. I never felt so mad. So mad I felt helpless. How the others see me. How I see me. It was something new, something I could be good at, something I could care about."

Muzunji's chest spasmed, and he nodded sagely. "Ya tink I did it 'cuz I wanted ta hurt ya?"

"Don't know what to think," Sargrim said, feeling it again. Somehow, when Muzunji defended his actions, it made him madder. Like he didn't really hear what he was saying.

Muzunji shook his head. "I was scared. Didn't know where ya got that book. Didn't know how. Could've been cursed. Could've taught ya stuff that would hurt others." He sighed. "Could've hurt yaself."

"That's my risk to take, not yours."

Muzunji chuckled, wheezed. He cleared his throat. "Rememba when ya was a lil' guy? Back on de farm. When we stayed wit' dem Elfies and their kid was sick."

Sargrim gave him a weird look. "So?"

"And ya killed dat hog o' theirs. Did it outta spite, I thought. 'Cuz I told ya not ta kill our patrons' livestock. But ya did it, anyway." Another wheeze. "Said ya wanted ta know what it was like ta kill an animal, and we shared ham off de bone togetha as we left the next day when dey found out. Fired me right there."

Sargrim shrugged, shoved the prod in a glowing log, shrunk back as a ember shot out of the pit. "So?"

"Ya always chase de scorpion, Sargrim. Chase de ting I say not to, de danger. De unknown. Even if it might sting ya. Maybe because it might."

He looked over at Sargim without looking him in the eye. "Told myself I wouldn't do dis, but here we be. I rememba ya mother's words as she died that night ye were born. As de curtain came closer, as de darkness closed on her, she kept mutterin' de same thing. Lookin' at de animals stitched into de tent around her. It was a wicked storm an' a dark night on de desert, then. Ya know what she kept sayin'?"

Sargrim didn't say anything, but he somehow knew what Muzunji was going to tell him.

"De wolf chases de boar, de boar chases de scorpion. Ova an' ova." He reached his long, thick Troll fingers over, tapped them on the spell book. "Don't tink I'll be around much longer. Keep me warm in my old age. Learn dis. Dis be what ya made for, what ya here for. Just…start small. Be responsible. Don't forget what's important. De ting ya can't replace."

Sargrim looked over to Muzunji, his eyes watery, almost milky, as the Troll looked at nothing in particular in front of him. "What's that?"

"Family," he said. There was something like fear in his eyes.

Sargrim wondered how close the darkness was to closing in on him.

After a while, his thoughts began to wander. Bulkrek and the spell book. The missing Orcs. The coming storm.

He got to his feet as Muzunji began to doze off, found another pelt in his things, pulled a thick wool tunic over his thin frame and cinched it with a leather belt, switched out some shoes for boots. He tucked _The Rudiments of Spellcraft for the Initiate_ into his book pouch at his hip.

As he headed out for the day, he looked back at Muzunji. It wasn't love, he decided, that he felt for the old Troll. Respect, maybe. Understanding. Pity. Maybe all three.

He also wondered about something else as he descended the hill into town.

If he was the boar chasing the scorpion, what was the wolf?

Ninefingers' tavern was the only reliable place to find activity in the whole village. With the missing grunts, a large chunk of the usual crowd was missing, but there were still enough to make it feel alive in a way no other place did.

Sargrim took a seat in the corner, away from the bar and the door, and a slender, silk-haired Elf sauntered over. Her name was Ammelissa, Sargrim knew. She had recently come down to do archaeology work in the highlands, but needed a safe place to bed and some extra coin, so she worked Ninefingers' place whenever she wasn't out.

She held out a metal device that scratched a spark onto the wick at his table. The oil lamp guttered to life, casting a warm glow over his small table in the dark, quiet corner. On the other side of the bar proper, a raucous cheer went up as someone stood downing an entire pint by himself among a throng of others.

"Cold day out. What would you like tonight, honey?" she asked, her voice something like birdsong and leaves dancing atop a creek.

Sargrim rarely carried coin on him. He rarely had it. He had come down the hill knowing he should look for some random tasks to net some money, but after the strange intimacy of Muzunji's talk wore off, all he could think about was digging into his new book. In the end, he figured he could splurge today.

"Stew and mead," he said, dropping a couple coppers in her palm. She looked refined, except for her finger nails, which were worn and chipped. She walked off, and he took out the spell book.

 _This material will cover the requisite remedial instruction for entry into most elementary arcane institutes. A solid foundational understanding of potential awareness (otherwise referred to as "mana"), arcane glyphs, and ley lines is paramount to entry into the transmundane studies. Further, knowledge that magic is a system to be manipulated is key: we do not deal with uncontrolled powers, such as spirits and the strength with; we deal with the methods of science. Without this knowledge, arcana cannot be employed._

He poured through the book for the better part of two hours. As noon approached, he discovered he had ear marked almost every page. Mostly, it discussed ways to tap into the "inner core" of magical potential, a store of mana that regenerated over time and with rest, but that must be tapped to interface with the magical systems of the universe. Meditation, finding a center, and concentration were repeated so many times that he felt he was simply rereading the same material in different patterns. He skipped ahead a little to discover that Madame Ji's instruction order seemed to be on track—the first practical spellwork involved warding magic.

 _First, find your center, as we have covered in the preceding material. Drink a refreshing glass of water and find a comfortable sitting position. These conditions will not likely be common in the field, but for now, they will help you become accustomed to a process that will become second nature later on._

He laughed. "I'm not drinking fucking water." He downed mead, beckoned Ammelissa for more, and cracked his fingers, spreading the book out flat on the table.

 _Second, ready yourself for evocation. Invocation, which involves entreating entities, such as Elemental Lords, for power, is not covered here. We deal only with personally manipulating the raw power of existence. Evocation involves the use of symbols—drawn physically or by inference with gestures—to enact and empower spells._

He turned the page to find a drawn demonstration of circles, squares, triangles, and glyphs. There were rough correspondents written for hand wand, and knife gestures, as well as an incantation that could be used in lieu of all of these things, such as when hands are busy in battle, or holding a particularly large tome.

 _Third, visualization is key. The most adept mages can enact a spell merely by visualizing the terms of evocation; that is, they can enact a spell by picturing the symbols or motions necessary to create it. This is not possible with all spells—especially the more advanced variety—but it is possible with more common, initiate material. For now, try several spell methods—drawing, hand gestures, and if you have it, wand gestures. It will take determination and repetition, but as you perfect the necessary forms, your spells will become more concrete and reactive._

"Hm," he muttered to himself, looking over the motions for a simple force ward. He looked at what remained of his stew—the starchy, thick beef broth was slimy to the touch. He dipped his finger in it and began to draw the symbols on the table. He looked back at the worded incantation and tried to utter the unfamiliar words as best as he could.

When he was done, he looked down at the small, circular table, expecting to see some magical indication that it had worked. He also wondered what he had enchanted—the table? the bowl of stew? the mug of mead?

He was still mulling this over when Ninefingers hobbled to his table.

"Hm, what's all this?" she chuckled, raspy as it was.

"It's, uh…magic, I guess."

"Don't look too magical to me," she laughed, wiping a mug with an oily towel. "You should see what we do in the Magic Quarter back in the Undercity. Don't use congealed beef broth for spells there. Real reagents."

"Okay, I get it. I'm bad. Can you leave me alone now?" He sighed, leaning on his elbows as he rubbed his forehead with his hands.

"Not going to ask me where to find work today?" She frowned, her green, rotted lips the vision of displeasure. "You always do. It gives structure to my mindless days. Like, oh, it must be noon, because Sargrim asked who needs chickens plucked or wood shoved around."

He sighed, closed his spell book and stowed it away, and got up. He remembered Muzunji, sick at home. "Guess you're right. What've you got?"

She raised an eyebrow and nodded behind her toward the bar to a small creature with long, pointed ears, greasy hair, and a fur-lined leather jacket. "Goblin wandered in last night, late like. Seems really pissy. Won't even tell me her name."

 _Wolf chases boar chases scorpion._

Sargrim nodded. "Another one for the goblin. And me." He dropped another coin on the table and headed for the bar. Ninefingers nodded and retreated.

Sargrim moved closer, pulled up a stool, and sat. Ammelissa dropped off both of their drinks and left without another word.

"Fitz," she said, drawing her mug across the counter and tipping it to her mouth. "I never told her 'cuz she never bought me a drink."

Sargrim nodded, leaned into the counter. The door opened and wind and flecks of snow burst in. The patrons went back to their drinks and company shortly after it closed. The cloaked figure that walked in wordlessly began nailing up missing person profiles on the far wall, then walked to the back.

"Fitz, then-"

"Boy name," she immediately interrupted. "Folks thought I was a son. Fitzcog. Why I just go by Fitz."

Sargrim cleared his throat.

Fitz laughed, an airy thing, and batted her eyes at the keeper. "'Nother one, please. On him."

Sargrim rolled his eyes and nodded. "Sure can drink. That mug is the size of your head."

"Eh, I've had worse. Gasoline."

"Gasoline?"

"Makes machines move. You know." She gulped greedily. "Like my old girl."

He shifted his weight. "You were in that airplane that crashed last night?"

She laughed again. "If I was in that fireball, I'd be fried chicken, yeah?"

"So, you…weren't?"

She wiped her mouth and looked off toward a steaming pot pie at a different table. "Nah, I was. Just ditched her when my meters went all wonky. She's a closed analog system, you know. None of that techno crap gnomes peddle these days. Engine and oil and gears, that's how Ma liked 'em. Reliable. Fixable. Simple." She punctuated her closing remarks with stomps of her fist on the counter. "But 'ere I am, dropping thick black fumes in your lovely atmosphere, making my way to a landing strip in the northern part of the valley. And, all of the sudden, my atmospherics just go _bonkers!_ And I mean just _crazy_ like you wouldn't believe, you know? No idea why. Readouts all looked clean. And, before you know it, I'm losing altitude and the thing is in a nosedive and I _slam_ that eject button. And let me tell you, I always skip the inspections and emissions tests—bunch of greedy malarkey, you ask me, higher ups trying to find _any_ way to milk the coin out of hard working mechanics like myself! Well, I'm glad I didn't, 'cuz that could've meant a faulty parachute. And I'm _shooting_ out of the cockpit and the thing is _spinning_ outta control and then _BOOM!_ It's just pieces and metal and fire and my cargo spread across a half a mile of forest. Right up to that old fort."

"Ma'am, can you get off my counter? And stop it with the arms." Ninefingers was pointing her Ammelissa around, trying to distract her other patrons from the loudmouth goblin pivoting like an airplane on her countertop as she reenacted her misadventure with unmatched animation.

"Hey, I'm tellin' a story here, pal!"

"Just get off the counter, ok?" She sighed. "Foreigners," she rasped and walked away.

Sargrim, used to the animated antics of Muzunji's rituals, regarded her with mild amusement, smiling a little as his tusks bared. He had barely touched his own drink. "Didn't know there's a fort up in the foothills."

Fitz snatched up her mug and downed the last of her second mead, and hopped back down to her stool and sat, flipping the tavern keeper something rude. "She's no fun." She leaned back on the counter, arms going to either side, as her legs splayed indecently toward the rest of the tavern. "Probably something left from the Arathians in one of their old wars. I don't know. Point is, I lost a heck of a lot of goods in those woods _and_ my entire plane. That thing ain't flying again. But if I don't salvage _something_ , I won't even be able to afford passage back to Ratchet, and Pa can't hold his house together with just what he makes from the diner, so… I'm kinda in some straights, here."

She cleared her throat when Sargrim didn't immediately reply. "Well?" she drawled.

"Hm? You done with your whole thing there?"

She hopped down from the stool and looked up at Sargrim. "You gonna help a lady out or not? I got goods to re-appropriate, pal."

Sargrim blinked. "Right now? With the snow coming in?"

Fitz pulled her leather, fur-lined bomber jacket tight and picked up some things she'd left by the door. A scarf so oil stained it might have actually become oil. Goggles and a leather cap. Her boots looked like baby's shoes. "Only gonna get worse, and then get buried in the snow, and _then_ some piece of work is probably gonna see the stuff just lying there and think to make some profit. And no one—I mean _no one_ —takes my stuff, ya hear, big guy?"

"My name's-"

She batted away his protest. "Don't care, you're Big Guy now. Hurry up and I might pay ya. Honestly, you probably shouldn't trust me." She leaped for the doorknob and, hanging by it, turned it counter-clockwise, swinging with it as it blew open.

"Now, let's go get some stolen junk."

The whole discussion had happened so quickly that Sargrim hardly noticed the scorpion embroidered on her jacket before she was out the door.


	4. A Whole Bad Idea

**Chapter 4: A Whole Bad Idea**

* * *

Whatever impression Sargrim had of Fitz at first, she was quick enough organizing her search party. Inwardly, he wondered if she would have been as concerned for the welfare of her kin as she was for her lost cargo, but she was so loud—she didn't seem to stop talking—that he never had a moment to express his thoughts.

It never occurred to him that only two would make it out of the woods alive.

Within the hour—it was nearing noon—the snow was coming down steadily, although not as thickly as Sargrim had feared. Warm golden light emanated from windows of cabins and huts, revealing golden flecks winking in the muted light of a clouded day. It was almost noon, but the usual din of the village had dampened to nothing with the snow. Fitz marched door to door, hammering her fist with a strength that belied her size. In the end, she had procured four sizeable brown sacks for collecting her lost things, as well as three other search party members.

Lriha had been the first to join. A woman about Sargrim's own age, she had grown up in the outlying area with her father, hunting and trapping all throughout the woods and hills and plains. She didn't shy away from the fact that there would likely be wolves prowling the forest, although she doubted they would bother hunting until evening and they could be back before that. She was lithe of form but her arms were corded tightly with hard-earned muscle. She carried a crossbow and bolts slung over her back, a buck knife, a machete, a necklace of raptor teeth from her father, and was clad head to foot in hides and leather. She arguably knew the woods and hills better than all of them combined.

"Yeah, there's an old fort out there in the hills," she had said. "From the Arathi empire, long ago. It's just ruins now. We could be there in a couple hours if we move quickly, and back just as soon."

Second, there was Ansekh. A self-professed tauren sunwalker, he had slung from his back a massive hammer. His heavy armor—a combination of ornamental bones and feathers as well as actual steel—was held together by leather throngs. His thick fur coat would probably be all he needed to guard him against the cold, he argued, but he brought a thick cloak just in case. In all senses of the word, he was massive, even moreso than Bulkrek, and would be able to carry at least two sacks of goods on the return trip.

Bulkrek had been last to enlist. Older than Sargrim by a couple years and trained not only with most traditional weapons but survival practices in general, he had not at first volunteered, but rather tried to argue Sargrim—not Fitz—out of the whole business.

"You're dumber than Muzunji's mojo magic if you think this storm won't pick up before the evening sets in," he warned, hanging his hide armor above a fire pit in the center of his cabin. He had been sparring with some guards-to-be since morning, and everything he had worn was either now wet from melting snow or smelled to high heavens from sweat and dirt. "There's a reason Kargatha never sent another search party out to find the missing grunts. Storm's already hitting, it's going to cover your tracks in case someone _else_ needs to find _you_ , and it's going to make everything out there look the same. There's pack animals out there—hungry wild animals—and they won't think twice about some quick meals. Doubt those grunts even made it through last night, honestly, where ever their sorry butts wound up."

"She's paying," Sargrim countered, "and we need to save up supplies for the winter, anyway." He didn't mention his skepticism that Muzunji would be able to weather another winter.

"Winter's already here," he replied, turning to him. In the half-light of his cabin, Bulkrek's eyes looked black and dark. "You should stay inside with Muzunji. And that spell book. You wanted that, didn't you?"

Sargrim shied away from the subject, his fingers brushing his book satchel. "Fitz says if she doesn't recover some of her cargo, it'll be buried all winter or looters might find it. She needs it to pay for passage home."

"She's a damn goblin, Sarg. Open your eyes. Her kind would sooner cheat their own kin than pay for a haircut."

"She needs help, and this makes the most sense."

"No, it doesn't make sense at all," Bulkrek replied shortly. "You even hear yourself? You're _trying_ to make this make sense, and it just doesn't." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Sargrim sighed and let his eyes wander around Bulkrek's cabin. A spartan bedframe with furs, so worn on the top that Bulkrek probably never actually slept under them. A stack of disused, dusty cast iron pots by the fire. Weapons leaned carefully against the back wall, with pieces of armor hanging from pegs. A canister of oil, some old rags, a couple sharpening stones. A box filled with fasteners, screws, bolts, and tools. Jerky drying from a rope hanging back to front. It seemed like the only thing Bulkrek really took care of was his armaments.

"I don't want to be a pariah in town, anymore," Sargrim said after some consideration as Bulkrek skulked around his home. "If I do this, and if we find those missing Orcs, Trabina and the others…"

Bulkrek looked down at him and placed a hang on his shoulder reassuringly. It engulfed his entire shoulder. "Sarg, you gotta let that go. There's a whole lotta people out there that just…don't see things the way you do. Have different values. Risking your life for a bunch of peons that are probably already dead is a stupid way to get respect."

"And you're just gonna give up on, like, a dozen lives just like that. After one night."

Bulkrek's fingers tightened on his shoulder and his look darkened. His hand retreated. "It's not about giving up. It's about being smart. It's suicide to go out there tonight."

"You keep saying that, but Kargatha sent them out last night just the same," Sargrim said.

Bulkrek's eyes turned to stone at that remark, when he mentioned Kargatha. His presence seemed somehow charge, like a bomb about to go off. Like a dog about to leap for the jugular. But Bulkrek seemed to bite his anger back. "You're overreaching, Sarg. Don't drag my sister into this."

"It's her fault they're out there right now. We knew the storm was coming yesterday." Sargrim felt the anger radiating off the warrior in waves, but he already bit onto something and he wasn't going to let it go.

"And you're doing the same _fucking_ thing letting that psychotic Goblin to drag you and two other warm bodies out there tonight! This isn't some adventure like in your books—this is foolish!"

"I'm going, anyway."

Bulkrek looked almost red in the face, but he took a deep, steadying breath and pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Fuck's sake, you're just like Kargatha. Stubborn."

"You said I needed to be more determined."

"Stubborn and determined aren't the same thing. Stubborn is doing something even when you know it's a dumb idea. Determined is doing the right thing even though you know it's difficult."

Sargrim shrugged. "Then I'll be stubborn and do this stupid thing, anyway, and you can be determined and do the right thing. Protecting us from whatever's out there and helping us get back with the goods before the weather gets worse."

"Fine." Bulkrek grumbled as he picked out his favorite axe, shoulder guards, belts, boots, the works. By the time he said anything again—which was only a couple minutes, since he was used to this sort of thing—he looked armed to the teeth. "Just put away all this crap, too."

"You're coming, then."

"We can't lose any more able-bodied orcs with winter coming," Bulkrek replied, grunting with effort as he tried to shove a foot into one of the boots without unlacing them. "With all those grunts missing, that's a huge chunk of labor that could keep us afloat. And we _definitely_ can't lose Lriha with her hunting skills."

As Bulkrek hoisted his axe over his shoulder to rest, he looked down at Sargrim and smiled toothily. Sargrim wasn't sure if it was fake or real. "Besides, maybe we'll find the missing peons. Dead or alive."

And that was that.

* * *

Fitz regarded the search party warily as she tapped her watch. Just past noon. If everything went smoothly, they would be on foot for about three or four hours, gather everything they could, and then be back before ten.

As she stood with snow up to her knees—it was just covering the bottom half of Bulkrek's boots, and Ansekh's hooves—she regarded the creaking woods with a great deal of discomfort. She had been raised in Ratchet, where it was more common to find a pit of tar and metal rebar than it was a copse of trees. The snowfall was easing, but this was as warm as it would be all day.

The fact that she was pretty certain it was the priceless, cursed amulet that brought her plane down compounded a growing sense of unease.

She gulped and motioned forward. "Hope ya'll are ready for a good time!" Her voice almost cracked.

They entered the forest at a quarter past noon.

* * *

Sargrim pulled his deer hide cloak tighter as they made their way slowly through the woods. Their path was due south from Muzunji's hill, and for the first fifteen minutes he could still glimpse the smoke spiraling from the top of the hovel. But soon enough even that was gone, and all there was was them.

As the woods grew thicker, the snow cover became thinner on the ground below, but every direction looked the same, just like Bulkrek wanred it would. Sargrim looked periodically at Fitz and Lriha as the two consulted a compass every so often. His flared, Orcish ears occasionally caught the sound of a twig snapping somewhere far off or branches collapsing under the weight of the snow. Once, he saw a deer.

Every so often, Bulkrek would look over with an expression that was part silent judgment and part resignation. Sargrim tried not to dignify the warrior, but when he did, he saw Bulkrek simply keeping a close eye on the company and the surrounding woods. The tauren, Ansekh, contributed little by way of conversation, mostly seeming to trample ponderously at the rear of the group.

After about two hours, what had been flurries increased to a steady, mild snowfall.

Bulkrek arched an eyebrow at Sargrim but said nothing.

"You know," Sargrim said after some time had passed, scrunching his nose as flecks of snow settled on his face, "probably didn't need to bring so many weapons."

Bulkrek shrugged. "There's animals out there. Maybe even dwarves." He looked back to the Sunwalker, who nodded grimly, hand brushing his long hammer braced over his shoulder.

"Fort's abandoned," Lriha said from the front. "Shouldn't have to worry about that. This isn't a front for war, anymore. Not for a long time."

"Well, she has good hearing," Bulkrek mumbled.

"Heard that," she shot back.

The others made idle talk for a bit, but were silent as the frosted breath blossoming from their mouths. In the half-light, Sargrim took out his spell book and went through some glyph motions with his one hand—his fingers seeming like sausages compared to the delicate, precise digits of the elf who probably wrote the book. Another barrier to entry into the world of the arcane. He sighed and tried his best to focus on rehearsing a couple variations on the warding spell. Another hour passed.

"Should be coming up on it soon," Fitz shouted back. "Keep those sacks handy, cow man. Easy peasy."

They crossed a small creak that ran black against the white snow, little mounds gathering on the river stones like tiny mountains. It was all uphill from there.

"Reached the foothills. Fort shouldn't be far off from here," Bulkrek shouted up.

"Good. Pretty sure my girl went down just north of those ruins," Fitz piped.

"What do you think happened to all those grunts?" Sargrim asked.

"Mm. Told you. Probably animals or something. Cold got to them." Bulkrek wiped his nose. "Maybe we'll find some bodies. Wouldn't that be a nice story to bring home?"

Sargrim and Bulkrek nearly ran right into Lriha and Fitz, who stood huddled together whispering aggressively.

"Problem here?" Bulkrek interrupted.

Fitz laughed nervously. "Oh, no biggy. Nothin' to worry about."

Lriha looked at Bulkrek harshly, presenting the compass. "Compass is broken."

Sargrim looked into her hand to see the needle spinning wildly and aimlessly. "That…isn't normal, right?"

"Wreck's just ahead in the clearing," Lriha said, turning ahead to lead on. "I've marked the path behind us with red yarn every five paces. We should be fine as long as the storm doesn't get worse."

Fitz smacked Sargrim's butt. "See, Big Guy? Nothin' to worry about. Now, let's go salvage some junk, get back to the village, and we can all go our merry ways."

"And you'll pay us," Bulkrek said flatly.

"Mm? What's that?" Fitz screeched as she bounded forward. "Whatever you say, pal."

"She's not saying something," Bulkrek said, flexing his fingers over his mace. "And that doesn't sit well with me."

Ahead, Lriha hacked through dense shrubs with her machete while Fitz tried to push ahead. Overhead, the cloud cover thickened. It had to be close to five by now, Sargrim reasoned.

He wondered when wolves got hungry.

The clearing yawned out of the surrounding tree line into a slight rise, strewn with tall grasses caked with fresh snow. Here and there, charred wood and metal detritus from Fitz' wrecked airplane still trailed meandering smoke in thin lines, although it wasn't anything that could be seen from a distance. Her flying machine, and the desired cargo, was spread in a straight line over roughly half a mile.

Sargrim's jaw clenched as he looked up at the sky, the snow now dimming visibility to about ten yards in every direction. The sky was now slate gray—no clouds distinguishable with the inclement weather. A sharp wind picked up in fits and then receded.

Night began to set. He had almost forgotten that the days would be getting shorter now. Ansekh threw him a burlap sack and nodded toward the strewn wreckage and the others, already at work picking through the junk. Sargrim stretched the bag's mouth open and headed over next to Fitz, feet wading through a growing snow drift.

"Anything specific we should be looking for, Fitz?" he asked, part greeting.

Fitz shivered, wiping her reddening nose as snot leaked down toward her lips. "Anything shiny, small enough to carry. As much of it as you can."

He helped her upend a large crate that had filled to overflowing with white powder. Jade necklaces spilled out, sinking deep into the snow. Fitz cursed and almost seemed to disappear as she dove, like a groundhog into its den, to dig it all up before it was covered again. There were specialty coins, thick-cut gems and rings, polished plates, goblets, fine bolts of cloth, and much more, all individually boxed with a grinning Goblin's face stamped on the site, a single yellow tooth prominently painted on his face.

Bulkrek looked at a crate Sargrim was dumping into his sack, taking note of the painted Goblin face. He made an I-told-you-so face. "Sooner rob her own kin."

Sargrim glared at him.

After it had grown sufficiently dark, Fitz was the last to finish stuffing her bag, so densely packed it looked like a giant potato. She dragged it with both hands through the snow, hopping up and down and almost screaming at it in a high-pitched squeak. Panting, she reached into her backpack and took out three cylindrical metal devices, keeping one for herself, handing one to Lriha, and one to Bulkrek.

"Flashlights," she said disinterestedly, as if they should all have known. "Flick the switch. Got about four hours battery life." She turned on hers to demonstrate. It didn't start at first, so she banged her palm against the thing's butt and it flickered to life, the beam shooting out across the snowy clearing toward the forest. "See? All good."

Sargrim was trying desperately to get a cold warding spell working with his slowly freezing fingers when he heard Lriha gasp.

"There's…prints," she said, her voice shaking.

Sargrim stopped mid motion with his fingers and looked over.

Bulkrek stared grimly at the prints, revealed now only by Fitz' errant flashlight beam. "These…have to be fresh, or they'd be covered in snow."

Ansekh stalked through the snow like a plow, a filled sack over each shoulder, slapping against his war hammer across his back. "Look," he said quietly, pointing out into the woods.

There were eyes reflecting back the light. Dozens of them.

"Wolves?" Ansekh asked.

Lriha's face went white. "This isn't possible," she said. "This…doesn't make any sense."

Sargrim cautiously slid himself into the middle of the group. "We have weapons, though. And we have the safety of a group."

Bulkrek shook his head. "They'll try to split us up and pick us off. That's what wolves do."

Lriha's voice bordered on breaking, almost lost in the noise-deafening snow. "Don't think we have to worry about that," she whispered hoarsely.

"What do you mean?" Bulkrek asked, unease building in his voice, too.

"Wolves have four feet, and paws," she replied, getting to her feet slowly, drawing her crossbow and knocking a bolt. "These are bipedal tracks."

Sargrim looked up at Bulkrek, "Then why are they just standing out there in the woods?"

Lriha was the one to speak. "Either those _are_ wolves," she said, "or, given the fact that these are bare footprints, those are our missing friends."

"But…how is that possible? They would be…dead. From hypothermia." Sargrim felt his spine tingling.

Ansekh spoke next, dropping his bags as if they were now meaningless. "I traveled the snowy north in my years of combat. Fought against the legions of the Scourge. The dead have no need to fear the cold."

Bulkrek forced a laugh, but it sounded hollow. "That's not possible. There's nothing out here. No spells, no curses. Just woods and the fort."

Ansekh looked at him grimly. "There's a reason why our mutual Goblin friend already took off."

Sargrim squinted around him, only to see a light bolting further south, toward the ruins. "The hell?"

From the woods, under their combined beams, one pair of eyes rose. Steadily, assuredly. Taller than any Orc, any Tauren. Any mortal thing. The light caught its antlers, its skull. Its emaciated rib cage. Its loincloth barely hanging onto its rotting hips. Boney fingers that stretched longer than any creature possibly could.

A breath snorted out from the deer skull sitting on its head. Around its neck, something gold shimmered.

Ansekh hefted his war hammer in his thick Tauren hands. Bulkrek did likewise, and the warrior, the Sunwalker, and the hunter all took up positions around Sargrim.

The eyes glittered in the light of Bulkrek's flashlight. Lriha handed hers back to Sargrim and took keen aim.

"How long can we stay like this? What is that thing? What are we gonna do?" Sargrim was all panicked questions as he backed into Bulkrek and nearly jumped out of his skin.

As if in answer, the things in the night began to move.

Bulkrek grimaced. "Not long, looks like." He yanked Sargrim back by his cloak as he began to run south through the clearing. "For the fort! Run!"


	5. Like Hunting, but in Reverse

**Chapter 5: Like Hunting, but in Reverse**

* * *

Fitz ran like hell. Her vision bounced with the uneasy path of her flashlight as she whined and dragged her now-much-emptier sack of goods both uphill and through the deep woods. The snow was thickening, night had set in earnest, and there were no stars or moons to see by.

"Get to the fort," she rasped between haggard breaths, eyes wide and pivoting in the darkness. "Just get to the fort and hole up and wait until those big dummies deal with the zombies, Fitz. You've driven air raids against the Alliance. You've plundered tombs and Uncle Harry's top-secret vault. You can _do_ this, girl! Get to the fort!"

She heard the others screaming after her now. Good thing she had a head start. Maybe the zombies would just eat them and forget about her.

She wondered if the deer man was omniscient.

Her lungs were burning, her muscles were burning, her face was burning. She slowed, turned back. The others' flashlights could no longer be seen. She couldn't hear them, either.

She couldn't hear anything.

 _Shouldn't've come back._ Her mind spun like her vision, her heart hammering. She was sweating—actually sweating—in the frigid night. She leaned heavily on her thighs, felt a cramp creeping in. Groaned. _I'm losing weight first thing when I get back to Ratchet. And fence this junk._

Fitz rocked back and forth, the silence becoming a buzz in her ears. _Shouldn't I see the fort by now?_

Panicked, she looked quickly around. Not a stone in sight. Just the deepening snow. Just unearthed roots caked in white. Just darkness and cold.

She moaned. _Need to sit for a bit_. She found a stump a of couple feet away—maybe it had been cut down decades ago, maybe a storm felled it. She didn't care.

The wind shifted. Snow whisked against her face. Her long eyelashes took to the stuff like glitter to glue. She rubbed it away, hauled her sack up to her knees, and looked at what remained. Some of it she had to leave behind to run. Some had fallen out as she stumbled through the woods.

"Alright, Uncle Harry, what'd you have in stock," she whispered excitedly. She pulled out a handful of the jade bracelets, slipping them over her wrist, inspecting them from an angle like an artist would a fine painting. "Ah, yes, Ms. Fitz. What a _beautiful_ piece you have—exquisite! Early Pandaren, I imagine? And how it _compliments_ your bodice." She leaned forward, pretending to whisper into her own ear. "Oh, Fitz, how the earrings dazzle with your eyes—like diamonds! Won't you marry me? Won't you?"

Her flashlight flickered out. "What the hell is _this_ crap?" she squeaked. She banged her fist on the back, jiggling the batteries. It flickered back on, but her bracelets had broken off. She cursed, picking up a dark, glimmering bead and inspecting the string. "I'll be a bucking banana, this thing's a _fake!_ "

She looked at all her goods. They were all fakes.

"Damnit! Damnit all!" At first, she was angry. Then she remembered she had crashed her plane and gotten lost in the middle of the woods and was being chased by cursed Orc zombies and some sort of zombie god.

"I just wanted to be worth it," she whispered, her small, high-pitched voice cracking. "A girl can dream, but she can't win."

She cried. Pathetic, sloppy, and snot-ridden.

The flashlight went out again. She sniffled, wiped away her tears. "For the love of…this piece of junk! Was anything in his vault real except that _stupid_ amulet!"

She shook the flashlight. Whacked it against her thigh. Jiggled it.

The light came on, and she stared straight into it, then blinked away, sighing in relief.

"At least I don't have to pay those suckers since they'll be dead," she admonished herself, feeling a little better. She started to laugh.

She tilted her flashlight and the beam shot into the darkness.

Her last laugh trickled out of her in a dry wheeze, her eyes widening.

When the Deer Man caught her by the throat, its fetid breath and spittle and flecks of mangled flesh and hair sprinkling her like a rotten spray bottle, she was skill gasping. And then she was choking. And then she screamed.

* * *

Fitz' scream was shrill and long and then it abruptly stopped.

"Did you _hear_ that?" Sargrim yelled to the others as they ran for their lives.

"We all heard it," Bulkrek replied between strides and breaths. "Just keep moving!"

The trees broke for a moment and his flashlight shot through the falling snow to find the dark outline of the fort, then it was gone.

"I just saw it," Sargrim yelled. "The fort!"

"Let's get inside and barricade ourselves in," Lriha replied. "Then think of a plan."

They broke through the trees at the top of a high hill of granite rocks and gravel.

Sargrim pointed. "Come on!" he screamed.

He shouldn't have looked back, but when he did, he saw the squat, low outlines of the shambling horde, their tusks gleaming. Some of them tried to speak, but all that came out were guttural noises, gurgling sounds like throats thick with blood.

He felt like his legs would give out, but then a strong hand took him by the gut and spun him around. "Move," Bulkrek commanded.

He moved.

The snow didn't stick as much here. He supposed maybe it was the shear wind blowing up the hill, or because of the dry chill of the raw rock. He didn't know. As they slipped and stumbled up the hill face through loose rock and gravel, the fort loomed nearer. It was a blasted, hollow thing. The roof had caved in, it looked, and the door had rotted away long ago.

He could hear the masses behind them shuffling closer. Quickly, he looked back. They were breaking into a full gallop on bare hands and knees through the snow and rocks, dark streaks of blood dried or streaking down their legs and arms. Madness was in their eyes—black and hollow sockets, jaws dislodged. Their bodies were malformed, somehow. Like their bones weren't on right.

They were almost there. Ten more yards. It was a clean, clear run.

Just made it to the door. Then think of what comes next.

His light bounced and jostled as they made their way. Bulkrek's was gone, although he could still hear the warrior behind him.

Then the light fell on the skull-headed creature.

They stopped dead in their tracks.

Behind them, the zombies slowed and whined as they turned this way and that. Like dogs.

Like wild animals.

Lriha dropped to a knee and took aim with her crossbow, knocking a bolt down the shaft, locking the cord into place.

Sargrim squinted, then he realize what the Thing was doing. Who it was holding. "Lriha, wait!"

She faltered, looked closer.

The long creature—its limbs rotted black and brown, bare bones visible through the stretched muscle and flesh, rocked back, its knees bending the opposite direction with a sickening crunch. Its mouth dropped open, a tongue flicking out. From one boney hand it held some kind of animal skeleton. From the other it held Fitz. She was fidgeting, kicking, but saying nothing even though her mouth was moving.

 _"Little creatures,"_ it said suddenly, its voice seeming to reverberate in Sargrim's bones, " _weak, fleshy living things. Do not steal from the forest that which it does not give."_

The Thing seemed to hack and heave for a moment, like a cat coughing up a hairball, and then it spat something dark and wet ten yards in their direction, nearly smacking against Lriha's shin. She jumped to her feet, looking down.

It was Fitz' tongue.

Then it took Fitz between its ribcage and its arm and held her there as its dark, too-many-jointed fingers pried her mouth open and pushed in, in, splitting and groping, her body twitching like a slug in salt as the bulge of it sank into her belly.

In one fluid movement, it ripped out her entire skeleton, casting it aside.

In the next, what looked to be a fox skeleton shot into her mouth, clawing its way in, spurs ripping through her cheeks, perforating her flesh. She was dead, now, but it made Sargrim feel the things it did to her body as if they happened to him.

He wretched.

"Holy hell," Bulkrek gasped.

The animal skeleton shifted around in her body as the Creature dropped her shuffling form to the ground. It looked like a sack filled with puppies. Then, it seemed to settle, and the Creature took the golden amulet on its chest, turning it slightly with its unnaturally long fingers, and Fitz' body cracked one way, then the other, then got up on all fours.

 _"Fetch."_

The Fitz thing leapt forward. It bounded with unnatural speed, loping side to side, madness in Fitz' eyes, snarling and snapping and jumping and mouth split wide, about latch around Lriha's face.

Ansekh's huge hammer came down like a meteor, smashing its body into the raw stone ground as it exploded like a pumpkin. He hefted his hammer back up, swung it over his shoulder. "Rest in peace," he said stoically, touching his forehead with two fingers.

"More like pieces," Bulkrek said darkly.

Fitz' head rolled a foot and then stopped, the skull inside stretching her skin into a lie. Her eyes still seemed, for just a moment, to have the spark of life in them, and the mouth twitched just a hair. The pupils were locked on Sargrim. _Hey, Big Guy,_ he could almost hear, _had a crap run, eh? Good story though, right?_

Lriha brought her crossbow back up, knocked another bolt, and fired for the Creature's skull. It whistled through the night, her actions smoother than thought, practiced, perfected, and the bolt crushed through the bone and out the other side, lodged through what should have been its brain.

It doubled over. Not dead, but next best thing. Immobile. Distracted.

Bulkrek nodded at Lriha and motioned ahead. "Make for the fort. Now!"

In moments, they skirted by the Thing as it hunched, grasping the bolt, moaning an unholy, guttural sound like a dozen tormented voices all at once. It lashed out at last second, its boney fingers slicing at Ansekh's heal, melting through his armor like acid. He screamed, faltered, picked himself up, wincing with every step. The storm came on. The snow came down. Wind howled from the south, funneling through the mountains like an unearthly scream. Sargrim held his forearm against the wind and snow, thinking only of the door as it came closer and closer, his footfalls unfelt, like the shock of it all made him a dead thing, himself—a spirit gliding along without feet.

And then they were inside.

Although the fort's main tower seemed to have mostly collapsed, letting the storm whistle through its crumbled parapets and gaping, empty windows, the dark hall the company entered was solidly protected from the elements. It went back into shadows, old cobwebs drifting ghost-like in its interminable depths. Old battle standards hung heavily from the walls. Occasionally, Sargrim could feel the structure shudder under the relentless winter storm outside.

Lriha kept watch, her crossbow at the ready and facing out the way they had come. At first, they saw the Creature huddled in anguish in the growing gale. Its minions—the lost Orc grunts from the village just the day before—huddled around it on all fours, some of them yelping and slathering.

Abruptly, they had whimpered and backed away as one, and the Creature had risen. Slowly. Ominously. Tattered cloth whipping from its skinless waist as its back straightened. It turned its head, eyes now golden pricks of harsh light set in its deer skull head, breath rasping out of its maw in streaks like a bull. Its eyes fixed on them as it stood, immobile.

Then the snow picked up, washing the night away in a wall of winter, and next thing they knew, the approach to the crumbled ruin was empty.

Sargrim did his best to tend to Ansekh's wound, although he tried to say battery power on the flashlight by only turning it on when the dull light from outside wasn't enough. The Creature's deathly scrape had scythed through the tendons at his heel. It was a miracle he was even conscious as untold amounts of blood hemorrhaged out.

"We brought weapons," he chided himself, "but no medical supplies." Muzunji would have a laugh about that.

Bulkrek craned his thick neck, looking down deeper into the fort. He snorted, unsatisfied but seeing nothing that the rest of them couldn't already see: blackness. "There could be other entrances. Escape routes. We should wait out the worst of the storm, find a back way out, and make for Thrakk'shan."

Lriha shifted the weight of her weapon, reclining back behind the lip of the doorless entry. "Cover of the storm could be good for us," she said, her back sliding down the grimy stonework.

"They're an undead mob led by a deer-headed giant that can control animal skeletons," Sargrim said. "Don't think the snow bothers them." He looked around, slowly resting Ansekh's hoof against the floor as he tried to think of something that could stop the bleeding. He didn't want to risk anything they were wearing—the cold was already unbearable and that would leave its own issues. He settled on one of the nearby battle standards—he didn't recognize the crest, which was no surprise—and yanked it down. A sickening rip and the clatter of the wrought-iron hanging bar echoed into the fort and then went silent.

As Sargrim attempted to rip a strip of the standard clear with his hands, Bulkrek fetched Lriha's buck knife, turning its handle for Sargrim to grasp. "He's not gonna be able to walk," he said objectively. Unsaid: _And he's way too big to carry._

Sargrim sawed through the old, thick cloth with the knife. It was dry and threadbare, and it came easily after he worked at it for a bit. He tied it loosely around Ansekh's heel. "Don't have anything to dull the pain, sorry." And without a second of delay, he yanked it taught.

Ansekh screamed despite whatever notion of fortitude he attempted to maintain. Shivering, he leaned back heavily. "I will be alright," he said. "I just need some time…to rest…"

Sargrim got to his feet and peered out into the storm. "We can't barricade ourselves in without a door."

Bulkrek sighed. "Most of the wood in this place probably rotted away or was eaten by insects long ago. But we can't risk leaving this open with our backs to it if we go in deeper. They could close us in." He grunted. "I should've just cleaved the thing's head off when I got the chance."

"It doesn't exactly play by our rules," Sargrim replied. "If it can raise the dead, we don't know if that would have really done anything. It could've just popped the head back on."

Bulkrek wiped his face with a hand and turned back into the fort. Then he paused. "What if we didn't need an actual door to block the passage." He turned to Sargrim. "What if you made something else."

Sargrim started to reply, stopped. Looked at the big Orc. Thinking. "I didn't get any of these spells to work yet. Seems reckless to stake our lives on it."

Lriha shifted again, shrugging. "It's not like we have many options, right now. Way I see it, we either freeze to death waiting for the storm to pass, or those things bum rush us and overtake us, anyway."

Sargrim flipped open his book pouch and slid out the spell book. "Hand me the flashlight, I guess."

Sargrim had been at it for what felt like an hour when his doubt got the better of him. Finding his "center," as the material liked to call it, proved difficult with the imminent threat of ravaging zombies and Ansekh's moans of pain.

It was a simple physical ward. He rotated his fingers through the glyph motions—clockwise this, counter-clockwise that, quarter turn of the wrist, lift the forearm, withdraw the index finger. He tried to draw the form over the space where the door should have been—tried it several times—but nothing magical seemed to happen.

He sat down with a huff. "It's not working."

"Maybe you just need to keep trying," Lriha replied. In all the dizzying motions of the spell, Sargrim had almost forgot the hunter was there.

"If I just had some sign, some indication that it was working."

Bulkrek had taken the flashlight back as far as he dared into the darkness of the fort, and he returned with little good news. "It goes back about twenty yards, then it turns right. After that, it looks like a maze of old holding cells."

Sargrim looked up, holding his stomach. "Any food?"

Bulkrek shook his head. "Nothing edible. It work?"

"No."

"You stop trying?"

He didn't respond.

Ansekh moaned. Sargrim looked over to the Tauren, then at his ankle. The cloth was soaked through with a sickly, black liquid.

"Shit," he said, crawling over to the ailing companion. He picked the wrapping tenderly with the tips of his fingers. As the wrapping stretched, a slimy, putrid substance stretched with it, stringing out and steaming. He took the flashlight to Ansekh's face, his fur matted and greasy, eyes closed.

"Ansekh," he said. "Ansekh, you okay?"

The Tauren coughed up more of the fluid, and a couple teeth with it. His eyes opened. They were shot with black, his irises a golden orange. "I…can't…"

Bulkrek leaned down, inspecting. "What the hell is this? How did it get this bad?"

Sargrim grimaced. "I don't know. I don't think it's a natural malady. An infection from the cut, probably?" He sighed. "This is useless. I don't have anything to treat this with. I can't do a simple spell."

Bulkrek shushed Sargrim. "He's saying something. What's up, buddy? You alright?"

"I can't…see…" He gasped again, his chest rattling, eyes gaping, straining. To see something in the dark.

Lriha shifted forward from her post, peering out into the night. "Guys…"

"I can't…see…the Light…anymore," Ansekh rasped.

Sargrim put his hand behind the Tauren's head. "It's gonna be okay. We're going to get out of here, get back to town, see Muzunji. He'll-"

"All I can see now…is the forest…" He gasped, and a trickle of the fluid distended out of his nostril.

"Guys!" Lriha shouted.

"Ansekh's in trouble here, Lriha," Bulkrek said.

"We're all in trouble," she replied.

They all looked out into the snow storm.

Golden eyes, dozens of them like a cat's, shimmered in the dark. They burned with hunger, and they were closing in.

They were on their feet in moments. Bulkrek took the Tauren by his arm, trying to sling him over his broad shoulder, but it was physically impossible. He motioned for Sargrim to help, but he could barely get Ansekh's arm in the air, let alone lift the massive Sunwalker.

"The armor," Bulkrek said, beginning to unfasten what he could. "Dead weight."

Sargrim looked at Ansekh's eyes. _He's going to be dead weight soon._

"Don't say it," Bulkrek said, his eyes closing sharply. "Just don't."

"Where will we even go?" Sargrim asked, working the fastenings off as plate clattered to the floor. His brain was reeling—he could barely feel his own fingers. Or maybe that was the cold. "You said it's a maze back there. And what if they found another way in and they get us, anyway?"

"I don't _know_ , okay, Sarg? Don't have all the answers. One thing at a time."

"I can slow them down, but barely," Lriha shouted back, knocking another bolt. Her quiver was already running low.

"They're damn zombies, Lriha, that's not going to do shit," Sargrim retorted.

"At least I'm _trying_. You gave up, remember?"

Sargrim closed his eyes, bit his lip. He knew she was right. Bulkrek was right. He had given up before he had even really tried. But now they were out of time and he could barely focus his fingers, let alone concentrate for a spell.

Sargrim's hand pushed under the chest plate to lift it free. It was then that he noticed Ansekh was dead.

His hands retreated and he blinked in surprise. "How did the infection spread that quickly?"

Bulkrek didn't look at him. "Stop fucking around, Sarg, and help me get him up."

"He's…dead."

Bulkrek shook his head. "He's fine. We'll get him out of here and back to town and-"

"He's _dead_ , Krek, and if you want to be like him or have your guts ripped out, you will be too if we don't move!"

A gust of wind burst through the hall, sending snow and ice across the floor. For a moment, no one could see anything. Sargrim held his arm over his face, felt the icy gale rake across his face like knives. He reached forward to where he was certain the wall would be, but somehow he must have gotten turned around and he groped on nothing, a rush running through his body as it tried to make sense of things.

"Lriha! Bulkrek!" His voice was carried away, sounding little more than a child's call on a sunny afternoon, then vanished into the tunnel.

The howl continued, grew stronger. He tried to turn in any direction that made sense, but all he could see was white and grey and black. His toe caught on something bulky and metallic and sent it clattering. The flashlight. He got down on all fours, fingers sifting through a growing snowbank. He seemed to find everything but the flashlight. Pieces of Ansekh's armor. Bits of brick. Other sharp, formless things in the dark.

"Bulkrek! Where are you!" He could have sworn he heard a distant voice, but it didn't come again. The howling wind built in his ears until it was all there was.

He looked wildly behind him, unsure if it was the way out or in. The cascaded of snow shifted. Golden eyes burned in the darkness. They didn't seem to see him yet.

He stumbled back on his palms, feeling the stone scrape them raw. His hand brushed against something rectangular and slick. His spell book. He picked it up, tucked it in his satchel. That meant the flashlight had to be nearby. Reaching, groping, grasping at nothing. Then, suddenly, he felt the metal switch on the back of it, tried to pull it toward him without turning it on, but it clicked to life, the beam shooting into the whirling snow.

All of Ansekh's armor was still on the floor, but the Tauren was gone.

He felt breath on his neck. Thick, moist, salivating. But somehow, also cold, colder than ice. As cold as death. And the smell of rot. A building, low growl.

That was all he needed.

He grabbed the flashlight and bolted. Bulkrek and Lriha would have to fend for themselves. Right now, his entire body screamed to _run_.

And he did. He scrambled to his feet, barely finding purchase on the slick floor. He ran headfirst into a wall, head spinning, something thick and warm and viscous sliding down over his eyes and lips. He wiped it away, stumbled backward. Into that _thing_ , whatever it was. Felt his head knock into its tusks. He shot an elbow back into its gut. It howled. Sargrim turned to his right, figuring he would either stumble out into the dark, unprotected wilderness or deeper into the unknown depths of the ruins.

He ran.

The snow died suddenly, skidding across the floor in whirls as his light bounced with him through the darkness. He was going deeper into the fort. He turned right, the only way he could go. He didn't look back. He tried not to think about where Lriha or Bulkrek or the thing that was Ansekh now were, what might have happened to them. He tried, but the more he attempted to block the fears out of his mind, the more they festered and grew and took form in his mind's eye. How would he get back alone? How would he make it past the creatures? What if the Deer Man found him? What if it ripped him open, spilled out his guts, stuffed him with death?

Eventually, it felt like his heart might give out, and he tumbled to a stop, hand grasping for purchase on a slick stone support. He panted, the sound of his labored breathing echoing and echoing. It was the only sound there was.

He didn't know how far he had gone. For all he knew, the fort could go back into the hillside, into the mountains, themselves. He could run forever and ever and just die of starvation.

Suddenly, he heard sobbing.

"Bulkrek?" he whispered, easing toward it. His light flickered out, and he toggled the power switch until it kicked in again. "Lriha?"

The sound was coming from inside an open cell, the iron cage collapsed on its side and covered in rust and cobwebs. He put his back to the corner, took deep breaths, peeked around the corner.

Huddled on an old, metal bedframe, the shadowy bulk of the Sunwalker came into focus, face in his arms and knees as he sobbed.

He quickly switched off his light, retreating quickly outside of the cell, praying to his ancestors the Sunwalker hadn't heard him. He had died. He knew it. He had felt the lifeless body beneath his own hands.

He heard scuffling down the hall behind him, a pebble rattling over the floor, clinking against the wall. He readied himself for whatever it was, raised the flashlight to bludgeon it and run.

"Sarg?"

"Bulkrek?"

"Turn on the light!"

"Shut up! There's…something in there! I think it…I think it was Ansekh."

"He's alive?" Bulkrek replied incredulously. Sargrim felt him brush by, into the cell. "Ansekh! Can you hear me, buddy?"

Sargrim harshly grabbed him by the arm, trying to keep his voice low. "He died, Krek! That's not him!"

"I'm not leaving anyone behind," Bulkrek stated, and grabbed the flashlight out of Sargrim's hand.

"Bulkrek, don't!"

The light flickered on.

It fell on an empty bed.

Sargrim backed up a step. The sobbing was gone.

Bulkrek stepped forward, scanning the room. "Nothing here. You…sure you saw him?"

In the opposite corner, in the dark, golden eyes cracked open. When it spoke, it was with the raspy, omnipresent voice of the Deer Man.

 _"All his flesh sees now is the forest."_ It stepped forward, Bulkrek spinning his light onto it. _"Be still, I am coming."_

The light went out of Ansekh's eyes, and they were hollow with blackness. Tears rolled down his face. "I…can't see them, anymore. Lost…out here…"

Bulkrek slowly unhitched his great axe from his back, drawing it over his shoulder, unblinking, as his other hand holding the flashlight on Ansekh. "Steady now, big guy. Let's just…take a second here."

Ansekh cocked his head to the side, black fluid hanging out of his nose like snot. He took a step forward. Sargrim now saw that his war hammer was still with him, dragging across the floor with an unnerving screech. "Come, let's lose ourselves in the woods!"

Ansekh's massive bicep contracted, and the war hammer—probably heavier than Sargrim's entire body—shot through the darkness as if from a cannon.

"Catch!" Bulkrek said, tossing the light to Sargrim.

Sargrim caught it, barely, fumbling with it as he tried to keep visual on Ansekh. The Tauren moved with unnatural speed and dexterity, tossing his hammer around like it was made of corkwood. Bulkrek barreled forward, dodging just below the arc of the hammer, and shoved his broad shoulder sharply into the Sunwalker, slamming him against a brick wall, dust tumbling over the two of them. Ansekh snorted, more of the black ooze dripping out of his mouth as hot breath shot out of his nostrils. He uppercut Bulkrek with an elbow, sending the warrior backward, and followed through with the hammer.

When it hit, Bulkrek shot through the room and into the metal grate, head smacking back with a sickening crack. He put a hand to his face, looking down at his own blood on his fingers.

When his eyes opened, he didn't look like a person, anymore.

"You pig sucking motherless whore," he spat.

His axe scraped sparks from the floor as it rose, catching Ansekh's descending hammer in the crook of its axe head and the handle. He shoved forward, drying to dislodge his weapon. Ansekh grated his teeth, returning force for force. Bulkrek slammed the heel of his thick boot down on Ansekh's foot, but the Tauren just grinned at him with those sightless eyes.

Bulkrek grunted. "This is gonna be a whole thing."

* * *

Lriha tried to keep her cool. When the dead had pushed in, she had bolted deeper into the fort. She didn't necessarily owe the other two anything—Fitz was the one that supposedly would have paid, and she was dead. She knew of the Arathi fort, knew that the top had caved in, and knew that if she found a way up, she might be able to come out the top. If all the zombies (or whatever) were focused on surging in to follow their trail, her best bet, she figured, was coming out the top, then running as fast as her legs could carry her down the foothills and back to the village. The storm would cover her tracks, and then she could be on her way, putting this whole terrifying, stupid affair behind her.

She had lived out in the highlands for years, always alongside her father as he taught her the way of the land. She knew how to see without seeing—how to focus on the senses that _did_ work in the darkness. She turned corner after corner, letting the din of the storm and the creatures die out behind her as she made her way inward. At some point, she had heard sobbing. Not her problem. She was better off alone.

Although, she supposed, if the storm cleared and daylight came, it would make sense to mark her passage in case she needed to redouble. It would be easy to get lost in here day or night, and she didn't want to get cornered somewhere only to be ripped apart by the creatures.

She had used up the yarn marking the path back from the clearing to town, so she used the only other thing she could think of: the raptor tooth necklace her father had made her.

To other people, it would seem sacrilegious to destroy something so sentimental, but her father had trained her to survive, and this made the most sense.

She slowed to a quick walk, not wanting to accidentally turn an ankle or run into a wall. She went for a bit, dropped a tooth, and repeated. Her ears tried to listen for the telltale whistle of wind—this deep in the fort, it would mean another way out. She kept one hand steadily in front of her, tried to feel if the floor was sloping up or down. It was sloping up. She was going higher.

Abruptly, her toe caught the first step of the staircase. It was narrow—barely wide enough for one person—and wound up with smooth, time-worn stone steps. Gingerly, she ascended, plinking teeth behind her.

A wet, raspy breath whispered up the steps behind her.

She went absolutely still.

A heavy step echoed through the dark. Then another. Cautious steps.

It was following her.

She reached for her buck knife, but it was gone. She cursed to herself. She must have left it back at the entrance when Sargrim was cutting up something for Ansekh's wound. She slipped the machete from her belt—wider, thicker, and longer, so probably a bad idea in confined quarters. But it was either that or her crossbow.

She slowed, but kept climbing. She didn't want the creature to know she was on to it. There was no way of gauging how intelligent the thing really was—heck, all of its organs should have been frozen solid from exposure. If it acted like an animal, she guessed it hunted like one.

Slowly, step by step. Her ears picked up the whistle of wind, and before long, a slender tendril of icy air slipped over her cheek. She was getting closer. She was almost out.

She heard more clamoring behind her. Shuffling limbs, labored breathing.

There was more than one, and they were picking up their pace.

She did, too.

The wind grew louder. She felt her hair whipping behind her. Ahead, maybe ten more steps, a door was outlined in a dull light from the cracks, flecks of snow slipping in. It rattled on its ancient hinges.

The sudden, animal need to escape overcame her. She bolted the last ten steps. The things shambled and howled behind her, their nails scraping on the stone.

She slipped, her knee going down hard. The machete clattered out of her hand and down the stairwell. She cursed, her world spinning from pain.

She hobbled to her feet, fell again. There was ice all over the top steps, glazed over the walls around her. She could barely find purchase.

Her ankle and knee throbbed. She lunged forward grasping for anything she could reach. Her fingers scratched the immense, wooden door.

She felt an ice-cold hand curl around her ankle, crimping like a vice, tighter and tighter until she heard a bone crack. She cried out, kicked back with the other foot. Another hand grabbed at that one.

Only the clatter of teeth remained as she was sucked back into the shadows.

* * *

Sargrim lurched backward out the cell door as Bulkrek threw Ansekh into the hall. Both hands on his great axe, he charged forward, pinning Ansekh to the wall with his weapon. The Tauren gnashed its teeth like a feral dog.

Sargrim could do nothing but watch, desperately trying to keep them in the light, as Bulkrek pinned the Sunwalker down. The Tauren reared back and headbutted the Orc, charging forward and throttling him in the cheek with his huge fist. Sargrim heard a wicked crack, and then another and another and Bulkrek's face was just blood and skin.

"Do something!" Bulkrek growled.

"I don't-" He paused, looked up and down the hallway. _Think!_ His flashlight whipped around the narrow space, finding nothing, until it landed on the dislodged cell grate. There was no way he would be able to lift it.

But he knew. He knew that he had to. And that had to be enough.

He bolted underneath it, straining with everything in him to push it up from the wall. Inch by inch it grated against the stone, dust and webs raining down on him.

"Sargrim!" Bulkrek called again, before another fix landed in his face.

With one more shove, his body shaking, he doubled it over so that it was propped against the far wall, the sharp, rusted teeth of its exposed ends ready to do their dark work.

Sargrim got to his feet, chucking rocks at Ansekh. "Hey! Over here!" He waved his arms frantically. "The forest is dumb!"

Ansekh snorted, turned to Sargrim with his forearm pinning Bulkrek up by the throat. "Wait your turn."

It was all over in an instant. Bulkrek jabbed Ansekh in the gut with a knee, barreled his huge body forward, and the metal bars shot through the Tauren, blood and black fluid bursting out of his back. The Sunwalker gasped, his arms twitching, mouth gurgling, and then Bulkrek hefted up his axe and brought it down over Ansekh's neck and the Tauren didn't move, anymore.

Bulkrek slid down the wall, his butt thudding against the floor as his chest heaved. Already, his face began to swell. He coughed, spit up blood, shot it across the floor in a wad of snot. "Thanks."

Sargrim stepped under the grate and past Ansekh's limp form, past Bulkrek, and stopped in the hall. He grated his teeth, looked at the fallen warrior and their dead companion. Then he made up his mind.

He began drawing the motions again. The glyphs came back to him from practice and memorization. This had to work. If it didn't, they would have more creatures just as vicious as Ansekh on their heels in moments. With his foot, he drew a line through the dust from wall to wall. He muttered the incantation, losing himself to it, shutting out his fear.

He did it once, twice. Drew the circles, cast the triangles, traced the arcane symbols in the air as if drawing war paint on a shield.

Bulkrek breathed heavily, coughing again. "Sargrim, what are you doing?"

Three times. Four times. He repeated the spell again and again.

Far down the tunnel in front of him, in the dark, golden eyes blinked to life.

There were sparks for a second, he swore it. As his hand circled around, the circle, itself, flared once. Twice. The arcane glyphs slowly gained their own glow, humming with a crystalline chime.

The creatures came on, on all fours, galloping, throwing themselves down the path in their madness.

 _If this is gonna work_ , he decided, _I'm taking them out._

He invoked an elemental sigil, the Titanic glyph for fire bursting to life in the center of the floating symbols.

They were almost upon them.

He wasn't sure if it would be enough. But it had to be.

He picked up the flashlight and grabbed Bulkrek by the arm, yanking him to his feet. "Come on! We gotta go!"

The warrior's eyes were almost swollen shut, weakly, he nodded.

Sargrim wasn't sure what was going to happen, but he wasn't going to stay around to find out.

The concussion rattled the bricks to their foundations. Sargrim's ears rang as he tried to cover them, his vision doubled. A ring of heat lapped over them, hungry orange light abruptly revealing the entirety of the structure before them. He doubled over as flame kissed his hair. He could smell singed hair and burnt flesh.

He laid on the floor, heaving, for a moment. He could feel a sort of emptiness inside of him, a dull pain in the center of his being. He turned his head back to see the ruin. Not a single finger had gotten past the line he had drawn. Fire crackled in spots on the floor, bits of debris floating down from the ceiling. The creatures were a mass of tangled limbs and faces frying in a heap, twitching, moaning.

He watched as the last of their eyes faded from golden light to nothingness.

"Sarg," Bulkrek said, his voice harsh. "Look."

Sargrim grinned. "I know, pretty cool, right?"

"No, you idiot. Look at this. On the floor."

Teeth. Perfectly white teeth. An animal's. In a line all the way down the hall.

Sargrim picked one up, inspecting it. "Didn't…Lriha wear something like this?"

"It must be a trail back or something. In case she got lost. Like before, in the woods."

"You think she found a way out?"

"It's not like we can go back," Bulkrek replied, getting to his feet. He latched his great axe into the harness on his back. "Don't want to end up crispy like our friends."

Sargrim scratched his neck. "Then I guess we have to go forward."

Behind them, the dead creatures that hadn't combusted in their attack skittered back into the darkness. Waiting.


	6. The Wolf, the Boar, and the Scorpion

**Chapter 6: The Wolf, the Boar, and the Scorpion**

Muzunji was never one for risking his own skin. One of the reasons he had taken to the travelling witch doctor trade was to avoid all the wars that ripped the world apart—he rather liked himself whole.

Thus, it was with great ire that he surrendered to his guilt and set out in the snowstorm, in the dead of night, to the howling fury of the winter wind and the nigh impenetrable haze of snow. From his high hill, he held a mittoned hand over his brow, squinting into the night, a creaking lantern in the other. The village lights were flecks of gold that came and went with the occlusion.

He knew where Sargrim had gone, of course. He had seen the future in the Orc's eyes when the airplane had come down—like some comet heralding the turning of the times, the churn. Some sort of apocalypse. That's all youth was, really, he mused. An apocalypse.

Old age was everything that came after.

He didn't know what he would actually do when he found Sargrim. He had hoped the Orc would decide against pursuing this thing, but Muzunji knew him. He knew that once the young Orc got an idea in his head—once he felt that idea—there was no arguing him out of it. _Can't burn his books foreva,_ he chided himself. Maybe that was why he had done nothing about the second one. Maybe it was a mix of so many things and people were more complicated than a single reason.

Muzunji shivered in the night, even his fine Troll fur nothing against the waling cold. Perhaps this whole idea was foolish. But he didn't see any other option besides waiting for the storm to pass, and it seemed like the forest had already claimed a dozen Orcs in one night. The track record wasn't great.

"I be too old for dis shit," he mumbled to himself for the second time in as many days. Holding the hem of his hood up against the gale, he began to march south.

 _"Wolf, boar, scorpion…wolf chasing…boar…chasing…"_ He remembered Veda's fading voice, dwindling away into the storming desert night, her strength a thing unstopped, leaking out of her like beer from a cask. He remembered the sweat on her forehead, the blood, the spasms. He remembered regretting that he had turned back into the tent that night—but the storm was wild and unchecked, and the sand felt as though it would sheer his face off clean.

And the lightning. He had never seen so hungry, so pitiless, so vicious a thing. Like an animal.

Or maybe the storm was the benevolent force, terrorizing his self-preservation until he ran back for cover. Maybe he had been the pitiless creature. Leaving a mother with a baby alone on a night like that.

She just wouldn't stop bleeding.

He had never had the real medical training he had wanted so badly when he was young. Muzunji hadn't been entirely honest with Sargrim that day. His father did prohibit him from studying medicine academically. But he could have been a field medic, ran off from home to any of the war fronts popping up daily. The truth was he had been afraid for the same reason war and the storm terrified him today: he was terrified of death.

That fear was probably why he spent so much time thinking about the end, about the ways to prevent it. It was probably what had attracted him to the healing sciences.

He tried everything he could think of to stop Veda's bleeding. He pled with the Loa, but they answered only in lightning and thunder. He hastily made wet compresses to ease her growing fever—an infection? He didn't know. He tried a coagulant, thinking it would help stop the blood from running like a river. He tried a trance state, another pow wow, most of the holistic remedies he carried with him.

When the light went out of her eyes like a new moon, when the final breath meandered out of her convulsing body—the _pain_ in those eyes—she just repeated the visions she kept seeing. And then, like a prayer: "Let my son see this brave new world."

Muzunji's fingers—those of a young, stupid Troll—trembled as she stilled and he had never felt so afraid as he had that night.

It wasn't a promise he had made to her, but it was a promise exacted. Maybe he felt guilty because he couldn't save her in the end—he had rarely done deliveries, but she had been so desperate and there was no one else in the camp. Maybe he felt like the Loa made a demand of him through her—for his cowardice, for not doing the hard thing when he was young, he would do the hard thing now that he was older.

And now he was just old. There was nothing else ahead of him but the end, but the gaping maw of that final darkness, salivating, teeth glistening. The thing that had driven him his whole life to do what he did. His fear, his bane, his wolf.

As he approached the woods, long legs shuffling through the snow, his eye caught the flicker of red yarn every couple paces tied conspicuously by branches. No one else would be out in this mess.

No one else was stupid enough.

He shook his head. _Stubborn boy._

Muzunji thought all these things, remembered all these things, as he hobbled through the forest, up the hill, following the red trail. He had to stop and catch his breath, felt his strength leaving him so quickly he couldn't keep moving.

But his wolf kept at his heels. He leaned heavily on a pine, needles and snow collapsing on him in the dark. He gathered his frail breath, his diminishing strength. And then he continued.

He reached the clearing in a couple hours, peering into the snow-blasted waste with his old eyes, lantern held high. There were sacks scattered about, the snow cover thinner on them than the surrounding plane wreck.

He nearly tripped over the hellish, misshapen form of some frozen, mutilated Goblin. He stifled a cry, then looked over the field, his lamp casting its orange glow to the low-lying shrubs before the trees.

Branches were snapped and trampled everywhere. Too many for a single person.

It was then that he heard shouting, his eyes narrowing toward the higher hills.

He felt something. Something dark and pitiless and hungry. Like an animal, maybe. Like death.

He took a step, his vision swimming, his body shaking. He had cover, but this was something else. He hacked, once, twice, thrice. He took out his salts, sniffed deeply, felt life resurge through his old body. Not as much as before, and quickly vanishing. He didn't have long.

When he saw his own blood on his mitten, he remembered Veda. He remembered his father and the thing he couldn't forget. The pit that could never be filled again, deeper than death, itself.

He realized with a sudden clarity that he had little family left.

His wolf spurred him on.

* * *

Sargrim and Bulkrek followed Lriha's trail as it led them deeper into the dark, rotted depths of the old ruin's belly. There were many twists, many hidden alcoves. Sargrim had to periodically shake the flashlight back to life, but it wasn't long before the flickering and fading of its bulb revealed its final minutes.

Neither of them spoke as the darkness grew more intimate around them.

The floor began to rise after a time, slick and wet and cold. There was a dusty haze this deep down, and the groaning of the deep earth could be heard and felt bone deep.

There were golden eyes in the recesses, flickering, revealing their hunger, the unending madness of their forestalled passage into the final night, their true deaths.

Would they end up like these pitiful, hungry creatures?

Sargrim's breath faltered. "What are they waiting for?"

Bulkrek didn't look around him to see. He knew, as well. "Maybe their master has something else in mind."

"Can we kill it? The creature?" Sargrim looked up to Bulkrek's jaw, tensing and untensing.

"We have to."

"Cut its head off?"

Ahead, stairs reflected back a dark, glistening trail, like a carcass had been dragged down, step by step, blotting a puddle of blood on each as the skull was hammered mercilessly. The trail of teeth stopped. Above, the telltale whistle of a sharp wind echoed down to them, the crisp winter night's chill only steps away.

"Sargrim," Bulkrek said suddenly, drawing to a stop. The larger Orc's shoulders clenched, released. He breathed deep. "You need to be ready. To do what you have to when the chance opens up."

Sargrim's eyes followed the blood trail as it meandered off into the shadows. He didn't dare let his light reveal Lriha's end. Golden eyes winked back at him, wet sounds pausing, then resuming. They considered the Orcs, but seemed to forget them.

"This is what it means to be anything in this world," Bulkrek said, his voice hard. "You were never going to be a scholar of magic. You're an Orc. The warrior's path is in your veins—spells may be your weapon, but your heart is your guide." He put his broad, heavy hand on Sargrim's slight shoulder, looked down to him. "When this is through, see the world, no matter how dangerous. I could never leave this place, this is where I was always running to. But this is your beginning, not your end."

There was a sharp bang, as of wood slamming and clattering hard against stone. It echoed down the stairs, and the golden eyes around them looked toward it, whispering and muttering. Sargrim and Bulkrek looked toward the stairs, and then the warrior began to ascend.

Sargrim had never been a fan of heights. The door at the top of the steps rattled from its ancient hinges as it shuddered against the wall. There was little snow now, but the wind was a raw force. Lriha's crossbow bolts were scattered on the landing and down the steps, along with her viscera and a thick sheen of ice. They had ascended carefully, as much aware of the slick steps as the shuffling of the dead horde behind them and the obvious trap before them. But this was the only way out.

He had assumed they had gone deep into the hillside, but it appeared they had ascended many, many feet into the bare mountaintops. Before them, a stone brick landing stretched out for thirty yards, laid out on the rock of the mountain wide and flat with bits of dry snow clinging to the cracks and arid shrubs cowering against long-crumbled walls and supports. It was open on all sides, and the wind snapped up from the south. They were well above the ruined tower they had seen from the entrance—below them was only treetops, rock, and a dizzying height that must have been a strategic advantage when the fort was first constructed.

It had been waiting for them.

Gaunt and taller than it had any right to be, bare, rotted muscle and bone and sinew corded up its legs and arms and ribs. It had been facing away from them, looking down to where the village would be visible on a clear day. Its long, boney fingers were black as pitch, with fresh blood on them still seething warm vapors in the cold night. It stretched its digits, turning its head slightly. Part of Lriha's bolt still stuck from the deer skull atop its head. When it spoke, the wrath of it shook in every syllable.

 _"My patience has worn thin, flesh-creatures. The she-Orc sated my hunger for a time, and that of my clutch, but still the forest clamors for the blood mortals have stolen from its sanctified halls. For vengeance. For death. An eye for an eye."_

When Bulkrek spoke, he shouted above the din of the wind, his voice deep and echoing. "What are you, filth?" he demanded.

The Thing considered this for a moment, cracking its neck, and then slowly it pivoted to stare deep into their eyes. _"I am a deathly spirit, a vengeance of the woods. I am far from my true land, but the world is much the same here. I was once worshipped as a god by trembling supplicants. Will you worship me now?"_

Sargrim looked up to Bulkrek, swallowing hard, but the warrior's eyes narrowed as he unlatched his battle axe and took it in both hands. "I don't worship death," he spat. "I deliver it."

The Creature bowed slightly, stretching out its impossibly long, emaciated arms as if to embrace him. _"Then come. Let death make a sacrifice of you."_

Sargrim's flashlight sputtered out, the bulb burning brightly for a moment and then popping. It clattered to the ground, the lens shattering. Behind them, its minions issued out of the doorway, shambling to either side in audience of the moment.

"Lok'tar!" Bulkrek screamed, and he charged.

The Creature swept its gaunt body to the right, slashing down its boney fingers through Bulkrek's bared bicep. The warrior cried out, dropping to a knee.

"Its fingers!" Sargrim cried, too late. Remembering what had become of Ansekh.

The Creature laughed, a deep, hollow thing, its eyes flaring. _"You will be mine soon, Orc."_

Bulkrek closed his eyes hard, his nostrils flaring. "Not before I see you crumble before me, demon!" He swept his axe along the floor, sparks skittering along the stones as it sliced through the Creature's left foot.

The Thing howled in agony, shuddering backward. Its foot dispersed into smoke and shadows and was gone. It reeled back and hissed at Bulkrek. _"It is only a matter of time!"_

Bulkrek was already sweating as Ansekh had. From his wound, the veins ran black. He stood up warily, cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders. He heaved his axe again, grunting with the effort. The Creature side-stepped him again. Bulkrek stumbled, heaving hard breaths. He turned. Again he lunged. The creature dodged him once more, laughing mockingly.

 _"Do you see the futility of it?"_

Bulkrek stumbled again, now on both knees before the Creature. He shot Sargrim a glance.

His eyes were running black and gold.

 _This is it_ , he seemed to say. _This is the moment._

Doubts ran through Sargrim's mind, through his veins like ice. Paralyzing.

The Creature grasped Bulkrek by the throat, its long, boney fingers wrapping around the warrior's thick neck as he struggled, gasped, his own hands trying to pry his body free. His axe clattered to the side, and the Creature kicked it out of the way, no longer mindful of its missing foot. It lifted him up into the night, rasping into his face.

 _This is your beginning, not your end._

Sargrim clenched his fist. He reached down, deep into his core, breathed through his nostrils, centered himself. No, no centering. No calm. Only the bone-deep rage of his heritage, his birthright.

He let the fear drop away from him, let the wolf's jaws lose their power over him. He remembered its eyes, remembered it in the woods, in the bushes, in the snow. He watched it, dared it to jump for his throat. But it was powerless unless he gave it power.

He opened his eyes.

Bulkrek's mouth sputtered blood and spit and black fluid, his body seizing.

The storm clouds parted for a moment—so slightly that the moon beam descended like a knife, glittering on the amulet around the Creature's neck, laying against its chest.

Sargrim narrowed his eyes. He muttered the words, bound the arcane to his intentions. Quickly, his fingers circled, traced out the symbols needed for the spell. Simple, small. Efficient. He couldn't summon a fireball, but he could use what was at hand.

From behind him, a bolt shot through the night, quick and sharp as a whip. He flicked his finger, and it pierced the Creature's shoulder, burning violet.

The Creature doubled back, hissed, clacked its teeth. Its eyes turned on Sargrim. _"Petulant mortal thing."_ It narrowed its eyes on Bulkrek then, and it smiled.

When it flung Bulkrek from the mountain, Sargrim felt a stone drop in his stomach.

But it was too late.

He stumbled, raced to the edge of the platform, his fingers curling over the edge. His eyes raced through the hills and the woods, but the warrior was gone.

 _"Now you, little nuisance."_

It stepped forward behind him, Sargrim's mind racing. He could feel—hear—the blood running through him, the panic, the rage. Each of the Creature's steps was like straw and stone sliding, grating across the platform. Its breath came louder, a dry rasp.

 _"Feast, my pets."_

He was moving before they reached him. He rolled to his right as two of them lunged forward, one grasping for purchase as it slid off the side and down the sheer cliff, the other pushing off the first's face with its hind legs, jaw snapping for Sargrim's leg but missing. There were eight of them left, eyes burning wild. Two more came at him. The spells came more easily to him as the rush of battle took him. His fingers ran through the motions. The incantations were part spoken, part thought. He threw his hand up. A ward glistened to life, claws that were not an Orc's nonetheless scratching against nothing as an attacker came at him from the air, slinking back behind its comrades. Another from behind. He didn't bother turning to meet it, conjuring another force ward. And another. He felt his inner strength waning, but the adrenaline kept him going. The death spirit watched, wordless, eyes burning.

Before he knew it, he was cornered. The dead sauntered in on all fours, salivating, backs bristling in anticipation.

Sargrim's mind raced. He didn't have the brute strength to push through them, but his eyes settled on Bulkrek's axe. It was large, unwieldy. The weight distribution made it drag as he beckoned it forward. It arced, whistling with its speed, caught one by the throat, one through the temple, one by the chest, and then the three were truly dead, a heap of limbs twitching in their death throes. The eight had become five.

He breathed heavily, vision swimming. Everything had become echoes of itself. The five were just their motions, just their limbs, just their gnashing teeth and fangs and hungry eyes. He didn't have much left in him.

His eyes focused again on the Creature's amulet. He had to take it out. It was his only option.

He couldn't miss.

He conjured up the last four of Lriha's bolts from the stairwell.

The minions closed in.

Sargrim closed his eyes. _I can't miss or I'm dead._ He needed a way to make that impossible. That moment congealed, slowed, as he rushed through everything he knew. The amulet was enchanted, magical. All magic was the working of some magical pattern, an expression of intension. He focused, reached out, moving his center beyond him, prying for the amulet's pattern,

It was like grasping a ball of needles.

He gasped, shuddered, felt the wrongness of the curse pricking his consciousness.

And then he released the bolts.

First one struck, and then another and another. The Creature screamed a dozen screams, the minions shivered. Like a scarecrow caught in a gale, it shuddered back, again and again, each blow into its chest a physical force. The fourth one struck home, piercing the amulet, cracking it in half. The Creature thrashed as it ripped apart, head to foot, its halves deteriorating into stretching shadows and dust. The undead thralls collapsed in heaps, blood dripping from their eyes and ears as their skeletons twitched inside their stolen flesh.

As the death spirit's body vanished, everything stilled, and there was only the wind and the snow and the mage.

Sargrim collapsed, panting heavily. He bore no wounds, but his strength was gone. He shuddered. The cold knifed into him. His breath splintered in his chest.

He became numb. Time lost meaning. His limbs were heavy like lead, then they seemed not his limbs. Empty things independent of his body. Then the cold became a blossoming warmth and the snow battered his face, caked his eyelashes. His eyes fluttered. He fell sideways, looking down into the woods below. Wondering if the impact had killed Bulkrek instantly, or if he had bled out, died alone in agonizing pain. He wondered if Muzunji would be able to make it through the winter. He wondered what the village would look like in the spring.

Dream and reality bled together. A phantom wolf, looking at him from just beyond the edge. It blinked, eyes gleaming, and it turned, chasing off into the dark.

He closed his eyes, dimly aware of an orange glow swinging through the night.

Then he was empty and gone and floating and all became nothing.

* * *

His dream was a series of snapshots after that. He was dimly aware of being led through the woods, stumbling, supported by another. One foot in front of the other. The orange glow following at his side. The snow unfelt through his sleeping legs. Legs like dead wood. A voice came to him, again and again. He slipped in and out of memory. The trees passed him by. They were descending. Once, he tripped into an icy black creek, crawled to his feet again. There was a howling of many wolves at one point.

Then he awoke.

He was alone in Muzunji's home. Their home, maybe. He still wasn't sure. His arm laid over his wrapped chest—he had been stripped down, dozens of damp cloths scattered near his head. He laid flat on his back, a thick fur tangled in his legs. He felt a layer of sweat over the whole of his body. His eyes met the evening's sober sun unwillingly, flinched. As he came to, he was aware of another person walking in.

He tried to lean up on his elbow, but went spinning back to his back. He thought he was going to vomit. His muscles prickled like a thousand needles pierced him from every angle.

It was a woman who spoke. Her voice was soft on the surface, like silk. Like silk with a snake slithering underneath. "Good evening, little Orc."

Sargrim tried to move again, felt the pain surge through him again. He was suddenly hungry. Very hungry. Like he hadn't eaten in days. He turned his head slightly toward the voice. As his vision cleared, he saw a stoudt, elderly creature, with thick brown fur and tufted ears and a slick, black nose. She sat across from him on a finely crafted chair that had not previously been in the house. Her hair was tied up in a tight bun, and she wore simple but elegant gold earrings, and a jade necklace. She wore a dress as smooth and supple and easy as her voice, black silk spiraled down one side with an ornately patterned purple scorpion.

She laughed. An old laugh. He wondered how old she was. Her eyes glistened. "You experience your first withdrawal, I should guess. It is a painful, craving thing."

His mouth was dry, like it was filled with cotton. "Withdrawal?"

The stranger nodded slightly, politely. "When one uses magic extensively, they quickly burn up their mana reserves. Normally, you would require much rest and nourishment to satiate the hunger and emptiness." She lifted a hand regally, flicking black, carefully manicured nails to someone out of his vision. "Let us speed the process. I have many things to do."

He was dimly aware of another of the same creatures—huge, grey furred with white spots—approaching him, easily lifting his head up, and pouring a lightly sweetened liquid into his mouth from a clay jar. It tasted, somehow, like spring flowers. Like young sunlight. Like somewhere far away.

Vitality surged through him like a river.

His eyes perked open, and he could see clearly now. The dryness in his mouth was gone, as was the pain in his muscles, although his stomach still growled deeply. He rubbed his forehead as the last vestiges of a dull headache faded.

"You would ask me what that was," she said, holding up a hand. Pawed, like an animal. Pandaren. At the motion, the other Pandaren, the large, brutish one, stepped back into a corner, hands folded together, and bowed his head in silence. "I would tell you that it was a drought to restore mana. There are many such concoctions, and they are not rare. I would advise you to carry one on you at all times for occasions such as those you encountered. I do not doubt that your…thrill-seeking tendencies will lend you to many such events."

Slowly, everything came back to him. The hunt through the woods. Fitz ripped apart and used like a puppet. Ansekh gone mad, his eyes filled with the death spirit's evil. Lriha, despite her skills, carved like meat in the shadows. Bulkrek, probably the only person he would ever consider a friend, and an unlikely one that that. And Muzunji. Where was Muzunji?

As he took a look around the hovel, he noticed nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

The old woman got to her feet, snapping her fingers to the servant, assistant, bodyguard—whatever he was. Faithfully, he hung a luxurious shawl around the woman's shoulders as she shrugged into it. When she spoke again, her voice carried an air of frustration, maybe boredom. "You will doubtless have noted the absence of that…uncivilized old Troll." She wrinkled her nose. "You have been out for several days. The story seems to go that he returned with you and only you from the woods in the middle of the night, and then shortly after succumbed to pneumonia and some other illness."

The hovel suddenly seemed to empty and stretch out in every direction, everything sliding a little farther away from him. As if the space, itself, would forever be a little too empty. A yawning thing, empty…empty of that one thing that could never be fully replaced. Darkened, a shade, by the grim passing of the only person he had followed across the entire world. Sargrim didn't quite know what to say.

The brute opened the door for the old woman. She turned to Sargrim. From behind her, a golden sunset streamed in, flecked with swirling snow. The chill wind tightened her shawl about her. "There is no one and nothing left for you here, little Orc. But there is a whole world of wonder out there for you to explore." She flicked out a small card, black stock scrawled in gold and purple. "I will be in touch with you soon to discuss the fine print of your acceptance into my school."

Sargrim took the card, looking at it curiously. "Your…what?"

She laughed, an airy, aristocratic thing. "My, are you ever the dense creature. Your kind always are. You no doubt forget the written agreement you made with me not a week ago?"

Sargrim blinked, realizing. He looked down at the back of the card. A scorpion was emblazoned in gold. He flipped it over, reading. "Madame…Ji?"

"The one and only, my dear. My people will be in contact with you soon." Madame Ji looked around the hovel one final time, her nose scrunching again. Her eyes fixed on one of the dangling bone charms, slowly swaying in the admitted winter wind. She reached up, almost stroking it with her black nails, but then she retreated. She gave the place a sour look and shrugged. "Stay or leave, it does not matter. You are now my student, and all magic comes at a price. We will find you."

Sargrim looked at Muzunji's medicine table. The tallow candles gutted and covered in dust. The old medicine books. The pots and jars of dried herbs and bones and feathers. The winter stores he would never have to use.

He knew that suddenly. That he would be leaving, that she was right. That there was nothing left for him in this place. _"When this is through, see the world, no matter how dangerous."_ Bulkrek's words echoed back to him.

Sargrim wasn't quite sure when Madame Ji and her escort left the home on the hill—he had been lost, swimming in emotions and thoughts he never thought he would. He went through the ritual of pulling on his pants, his boots, a tunic. He left his deer cloak there, in the house. It felt only respectful to leave something of himself to that place. With the people he had left behind.

He took a sizeable pack with him, as well as the spell book Bulkrek had left him. Madame Ji had apparently bequeathed him her next book: _Mastering the Language of the Creators, an Introduction_. He took some of Muzunji's medicinal and holistic remedies and concoctions for the road—he didn't know where he would go, or how long it would take to get there. He packed most of what remained of the dried meats, some potatoes, carrots, radishes. A couple knives. He didn't really know how to hunt. He didn't know how to survive on his own.

He didn't know so many things, and he had focused so much on trying to learn magic. He almost laughed to himself. Almost.

Outside, he opened the mule's pen, let the thing run free. It would have been wise to bring the animal, to bring extra supplies, maybe a tent. But he didn't have a tent. And it would only be a sobering reminder of his past life. One that he had outgrown. One that he would leave behind.

He shrugged his pack over his shoulders. At some point, he would need to get another cloak. Maybe he would head north for the Undercity. From there, anywhere. The world.

Until Madame Ji called.

The home on the hill. Snow laid over everything as far as he could see, cast everything in white. Below, trails of smoke twisted out of Ninefingers' tavern, out of the cabins and huts. Maybe he would see Kargatha before he left. To grieve with her. No, he wouldn't. There was nothing between them but that shared pain of loss.

A breath, a step. He turned one last time to look at the closest thing to a home he had ever had. Maybe out of ritual, out of respect, out of memory—he didn't know—he reached in, stirred the bone charm with his hand, let them spin and clatter.

And then the home was just a house and he left.


End file.
